About GIFQ

GIFQ is a B2B gift card infrastructure platform powering payouts, catalog distribution, and loyalty programmes for businesses worldwide. With 5,000+ brands across 90+ countries and instant delivery, GIFQ helps platforms send value to anyone, anywhere – from affiliate payouts and employee rewards to customer incentives and gaming top-ups.

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“When your product catalogue spans gaming credits, subscription activations, prepaid cards, and in-app currency vouchers, the question isn’t whether you have a tax problem – it’s how many layers deep it goes.”

— Dalia Rumbaitė, Head of Growth, GIFQ

The Challenge

Gift cards and digital redemption codes look simple from the outside. Underneath, they sit in one of the most contested corners of indirect tax law.

The core problem is classification. A prepaid gaming code could be a voucher, a digital service, or a software licence – and each classification triggers a different tax framework, a different timing for when VAT is due, and a different rate. A Single Purpose Voucher (SPV), redeemable only for a specific product at a known rate, attracts VAT at the point of sale. A Multi Purpose Voucher (MPV) defers VAT to redemption. The challenge: many of GIFQ’s products sit right on the line between these categories, and the answer shifts depending on the jurisdiction.

Subscription codes added another dimension. Prepaid codes activating a gaming pass or streaming service are typically treated as digital services – not goods, which flips the place-of-supply analysis entirely and brings EU OSS rules, UK digital service obligations, and US economic nexus thresholds into play simultaneously.

Without a deliberate framework, platforms in GIFQ’s position routinely find themselves collecting tax at the wrong time, in the wrong jurisdiction, or not at all. As Dalia puts it: “We knew we were growing into markets where the rules weren’t straightforward. We needed to understand exactly where we stood before we scaled further.”

The Solution

1stopVAT conducted a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction indirect tax analysis covering GIFQ’s full product mix: gift cards, digital redemption codes, subscription activation codes, and in-app currency vouchers.

For each product type in each market, the work covered:

• SPV vs. MPV vs. digital service classification – locking in the correct tax trigger point (issue, redemption, or delivery)
• Applicable VAT, GST, and sales tax rates per product category, including reduced rates and exemptions for digital content
• Registration obligations and thresholds – where GIFQ already had a collection obligation, and where obligations would arise as volumes grew
• B2B vs. B2C treatment – particularly important for EU and UK reverse-charge mechanics, where VAT obligations shift to the business customer

The output was a clean, country-by-country matrix – a single reference document that mapped every product type to its correct tax treatment in every relevant market.

The Outcome

GIFQ now has a structured, defensible indirect tax position across its full product range:

• Gift cards correctly classified as SPV or MPV based on redemption scope, with VAT collected at the right point in the transaction chain
• Digital codes and subscription activations treated as digital services where applicable, with OSS and equivalent registrations identified for priority markets
• A phased registration roadmap aligned to actual revenue thresholds – no over-registration, no gaps where it matters
• Checkout and pricing logic updated to reflect the correct tax treatment for each product in each geography

We came away with a clear picture of where we were compliant, where we needed to act, and where growth into new markets would trigger new obligations. That’s exactly what we needed.

Dalia Rumbaitė, Head of Growth, GIFQ