TikTok Shop launches digital gift cards in the U.S.

TikTok Shop rolled out a new feature that allows users to purchase digital gift cards that enable recipients to purchase items from its marketplace. Users can load the gift cards with anything from $10 to $500 and personalize them with animated designs for specific occasions like birthdays, weddings, or to say “thank you” or “sorry for cheating on you.”

The gift cards, which are currently only available in the U.S. for now, are delivered via e-mail, and the recipient must have a TikTok account to spend them.  The company says it plans to add additional personalization features such as the ability to attach a video message to the cards or include an “interactive unboxing that captures their reaction in real-time.”

Brilliant idea from TikTok for a few reasons: 

1. Gift cards bring more money into a retail ecosystem, which can benefit all sellers on the platform.
2. People love buying gift cards! The global gift card market is valued at over $1 trillion in 2025, and over $230B in the U.S. alone.
3. Amazon is ranked as the top merchant for gift cards in the U.S. and likely sells hundreds of millions of gift cards each year, though it doesn't disclose a total amount.
4. Amazon’s unredeemed gift card liability was reported at about $5.4B as of the end of 2024, so that should give you some indication of how many gift cards they sell.
5. Nobody knows each others mailing addresses anymore. Digital gift cards will allow friends to shop for each other on TikTok without having to ruin the surprise by asking for their address.
6. Purchasing a gift card is an easy, quick decision to make. TikTok will be able to prompt users with messages like, “Hey it's Paul's birthday today! Want to send him a personalized digital gift card?”
7. Gift cards become one more tool that TikTok can use to incentivize creators on its platform, with amounts that have real value, but ultimately feed back into its ecosystem.

I look forward to seeing how gift cards play out for TikTok. I predict that the move is going to be a big success in regards to generating additional GMV to TikTok Shop.