Guide
Virtual gifts without handling payments
A gift economy has two halves: the money (people buying coins) and the coins (people spending them on gifts). Keep the two apart and the coin half needs no payment license, no payouts and no card data. Here is how that split works.
The money stays with your store
Users buy coins the way they buy anything in your app. Inside an iOS or Android app that means the store's in-app purchase (Apple's and Google's rules require it for digital goods); on the web it is your own checkout. The money goes to you through the store or your payment provider, as it does today. GiftingStack never sees a card, never takes a payment and never moves money.
The coins live in a ledger
Once the store confirms a purchase, your server credits the coins. From then on everything is coins: balances, gift sends, reversals. Every change is a row in an append-only ledger with who did it and why, so a balance is always the sum of its history and every question ("where did my coins go?") has an answer.
- Verified purchases. App Store and Google Play receipts are checked before a credit; the same purchase can never be credited twice.
- Refunds. Store refund notifications can take the coins back.
- No double spending. Every coin-moving request is idempotent; a gift needs a balance that covers it.
Receivers get recognition, not cash
This is the line that keeps a gift economy simple. Sending a gift spends the sender's
coins; the receiver gets a received-gifts counter, never a spendable balance, and nothing
can be cashed out. If you want to reward creators, you do it in your own app with your own
rules (points, ranks, or a creator program you run and pay yourself), triggered by a
gift.sent webhook.
Why this matters
- No money transmission: coins never turn back into money through GiftingStack.
- No card or bank data in your gifting system.
- Store policies are met: digital goods inside mobile apps are sold through the store.
- Clean records: an audit trail for every coin, with user deletion that keeps the books balanced.
How GiftingStack fits
GiftingStack is the coin half as a service: balances, the gift catalog, sends, the ledger, leaderboards, live gift rooms and webhooks, with SDKs for web, React Native, Flutter, Android and iOS. You keep your users, your store and your money. Start with the quickstart or read how the fee is measured.