Zeek, a website and app that lets consumers buy and sell unwanted gift cards, is launching a one-day pop-up shop offering consumers the chance to swap their unwanted Christmas gift cards for the equivalent amount in cash – or donate the equivalent amount to charity.
The ‘Cash or Kind’ pop-up will be open on Tuesday 10th January at the Westfield Stratford shopping centre. Shoppers will be offered the chance to exchange unwanted vouchers for cash to buy something they really want or to donate their gift cards or vouchers to charity.
Zeek has pledged to match any charity donations.
The pop-up will accept most gift cards, paper and digital vouchers, so long as they have a minimum value of £5 and up to a maximum of £100.
The pop-up will be open from 9.00am-4.00pm and has been launched on the back of research from Zeek that shows that the average British consumer receives £44 worth of unwanted gifts over Christmas, with around £300m potentially wasted nationwide.
The pop-up shop was conceived by Zeek’s PR agency, Tin Man Communications.
The Zeek app and site provide a marketplace for selling and buying gift vouchers, allowing consumers to exchange unwanted cards for cash and also to buy gift cards at discounted rates (on average, 10% off). The app is available on App Store and Google Play.
To list a card or voucher, users just scan them using their smart phone camera and post them to the platform. Zeek claims 94% of vouchers sell within 24 hours – Amazon vouchers have sold within five seconds.
Zeek was set up by co-founders Itay Erel, Daniel Zelkind and Ziv Isaiah in Israel. Since receiving initial funding from Uri Levine, one of the co-founders of map software company Waze (bought by Google for over $1bn), Blumberg Capital and QUALCOMM Ventures, it has successfully launched in the UK and now has over 100,000 users trading on the platform. Zeek has offices in Israel and London.
