India’s gift-card growth puts APIs and redemption in focus

Sachin Kumar sees India’s gift-card business becoming a network of issuing systems, distribution APIs and merchant relationships. In a written editorial outline supplied to GiftCard.News on October 13, the Valuedesign India chief executive described digital stored value moving through corporate rewards, loyalty platforms, e-commerce and fintech channels.

His argument brings an operating question into a market usually described through growth forecasts: what makes a gift card work across the systems that sell it, deliver it and accept it? For a merchant, the experience continues through activation, redemption and reporting. For a distributor, access to a catalogue has to translate into a usable programme for buyers and recipients.

Two published forecasts put India’s 2026 market at US$11.85 billion and US$13.65 billion respectively. Those estimates describe different broad market scopes. The infrastructure thesis is more useful when it is examined alongside those definitions, concrete merchant implementations and the regulatory limits attached to different forms of stored value. [S01] [S02]

Programme technology and corporate distribution work together

Valuedesign’s submitted perspective separates issuing and processing from digital distribution. The first maintains the brand’s gift-card programme, including issuance, activation, redemption and records. The second connects participating brands with marketplaces, corporate reward providers and other sales channels. Kumar argues that a shared API connection can give distributors access to multiple brands while widening the channels available to each merchant.

“API-led digital value ecosystem connecting brands, consumers and distribution platforms.”

Sachin Kumar, Valuedesign India, written editorial outline supplied October 13, 2026

That distinction changes the commercial unit being sold. A merchant can require both the technology to honour a gift balance and access to buyers outside its own website. A corporate rewards platform needs a catalogue its recipients can actually use, together with delivery and programme records. Connecting those functions can create a distribution proposition for the merchant and an administration proposition for the employer; the value of each depends on how the programme performs.

Mordor’s 2026 report estimates that corporate buyers represented 61% of India’s gift and incentive card market in 2025. This modelled mix gives context to employer and channel-reward distribution, without measuring any provider’s results. [S02]

An August 14 announcement by Valuedesign described an end-to-end digital-gift programme for Meghavi Wellness Spa. The stated scope included issuance, activation, redemption processing, digital delivery, distribution and real-time reporting. SMS and email delivery, alongside Adivaha Shop channels for consumers, companies and HR departments, show how a service merchant’s gift programme can reach several buyer groups. [S03]

In a separate August 13 announcement, the Indian subsidiary connected its gift-card platform with The Reward Store, operated by Vananam Enterprise Pvt. Ltd. Valuedesign described issuing, distribution and use management for employee recognition, customer loyalty and channel incentives, with API integration into existing systems. These are dated examples of the infrastructure model Kumar discusses in October. [S04]

GiftCard.News has previously reported on the Meghavi programme and The Reward Store integration. Their relevance here is the combination of processing and distribution capabilities, rather than a newly announced October partnership.

The forecasts describe scale, with different boundaries

The PayNXT360 Q1 2026 report, announced by Research and Markets on March 3, forecast an Indian gift-card market of US$11.85 billion in 2026 and US$20.49 billion by 2030, with a stated 14.7% compound annual growth rate over 2026–2030. Its published contents separately identify a digital gift-card segment, so the headline total cannot simply be relabelled as a digital-only market. [S01]

Mordor Intelligence’s primary report page, updated July 13, puts India’s gift and incentive card market at US$13.65 billion in 2026 and US$20.71 billion by 2031, with 8.70% annual compound growth over 2026–2031. Its scope includes physical and electronic products. The 2031 endpoint corrects the 2030 date in the submitted outline. [S02]

These forecasts provide a range of published perspectives, not a single reconciled total. Their different horizons also make the two terminal values unsuitable for a same-year comparison. Both are background to Kumar’s contribution; the forecasts were published earlier in 2026.

Statista measures a different part of the picture

Statista’s latest India series covers prepaid cards and/or vouchers used for online payments or at a physical point of sale through the second quarter of 2026. Its public description reports a decline in POS usage between 2018 and Q2 2026. The survey concerns the residential online population aged 18–64, with a stated base of 12,000-plus respondents per country and a rolling 12-month measure. [S05]

That provides a useful check on the language of growth. A survey response about using a broad prepaid category differs from the monetary value assigned to an entire gift-card market. The user groups, products and units are different. The same person may use more than one payment method, and the survey is not a census of all Indian residents or a gift-card-only adoption measure. [S05]