What Is Nift? The Company Behind the Surprise Thank-You Gift in Your Inbox

A message arrives from a company you already use, a parking app or a gym or an installment plan, and it carries a present: a gift from a brand you’ve never tried, attached as a thank-you. Moments like that now occur more than 50 million times a month across the US, UK, Canada and Australia. A real gift shows up bearing a name that isn’t the name that sent it, and the mismatch confuses people.

Sitting in the middle of that exchange is Nift, a Boston company that runs gifting technology for partners like Klarna, Afterpay, ParkMobile and Planet Fitness, and that delivered more than 29 million thank-you gifts to U.S. consumers in the year before its 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 listing, a ranking it repeated at No. 120 the following year. Its founder, Elery Pfeffer, describes the model this way: “With Nift, you get thank-you gifts from brands you know to try brands you don’t.”

Why did I get a Nift gift?

A Nift gift shows up because a company you already do business with decided to thank you for something specific. Afterpay offers gifts to customers after a second on-time payment, Modern Retail reported. Klarna thanks shoppers for completing a purchase.

A gym chain might mark a membership milestone; a parking app might thank a driver for leaving a review. Each partner picks its own moments, and Klarna alone has identified about 20 points in its customer journey where a gift fits.

Nift’s own FAQ puts it plainly: “If you’ve received a Nift gift, it’s a surprise thank-you gift from one of our partners. You’ve earned it by being a great customer,” per the company’s consumer FAQ. Partners decide when to say thanks. Nift’s software decides which gifts you see.

You never signed up for Nift, which is exactly why the email feels unfamiliar. Your relationship runs through the partner, and Nift operates as the technology layer underneath it. Cash App, GasBuddy, iHeartMedia and Foot Locker run the same play through the same system, which is why the messages seem to be everywhere at once.

How a Nift gift works

Claiming a gift takes about two minutes:

1. A partner sends a gift notice by email, inside its app, or by push notification.
2. You enter the gift code at GoNift.com.
3. You answer a few quick questions about your tastes.
4. Nift’s matching system shows you a pair of tailored gift options, and you pick one.
5. A certificate arrives, valid for 30 days at the business you selected.

Behind step four sits the company’s actual product. Nift matches people to gifts using taste, behavior and context, sorting recipients into categories like fashion, restaurants, music and home goods before presenting two options, Retail Touchpoints reported in its coverage of the Klarna rollout. Gifts range from a credit toward a candle or a wine order to an offer at a local restaurant, drawn from a network the company says spans more than 15,000 businesses, national names like HelloFresh and Allbirds among them. Whether the sender is a gym, a radio app or a parking service, the claiming flow stays identical; only the branding on the notification changes.

Brands on the other side fund the gifts because they want a shot at a new customer. Selecting one costs you nothing: “You never need to pay to select a gift. The brands featured on Nift fully fund all gifts offered to you,” the FAQ states.

Some gifts cover an item outright; others cover part of a larger purchase, and the certificate spells out its terms before you commit.

Nift, GoNift and gonift.com are the same company

Naming trips people up more than the gifts do. Nift is the brand, and both nift.com and GoNift.com belong to it, with GoNift.com handling gift selection and redemption. The legal entity is Nift Networks Inc., a company founded in Boston in 2015 by Pfeffer, a data scientist who told TechCrunch the name is short for “neighborhood gift.” One company, one platform, several names surfacing in different places.

Ownership is equally plain. Nift Networks is privately held and venture-backed; Spark Capital, Foundry Group and Accomplice funded its $16.5 million Series A in 2018, the company has announced no acquisition or sale since, and Pfeffer remains CEO.

No app download is required. Nift works through the website and through its partners’ own apps, so a gift can be claimed wherever the partner already talks to you: a browser, the Klarna app, a push notification. Questions go to help@gonift.com or the contact form at gonift.com/contact_us.

Verifying a gift email takes two checks. It should reference a company you actually use, and its link should resolve to nift.com or gonift.com. Two more facts help: Nift cards can’t be bought or signed up for, they only ever arrive as a thank-you from a partner, and per the company’s FAQ, no payment is required to select a gift.

What the gift doesn’t do

Every certificate has edges worth knowing. It expires 30 days after you select it, and it works only at the business you chose, per the company’s FAQ. A Nift certificate also isn’t a general-purpose gift card; its value lives with one merchant, and if the gift covers part of a purchase rather than all of it, the remainder comes out of your pocket.

A gift that misses isn’t necessarily final. Selections can be reset, and the company’s support team swaps gifts through its Happiness Guarantee at gonift.com/happy, though the 30-day clock still applies to whatever you end up holding.

Underneath the wrapping, the trade is visible once you look for it. Brands pay Nift to reach likely new customers at a moment of goodwill, a model the company pitches to businesses as an alternative to buying more advertising. Recipients get a gift; brands get an introduction. Whether the introduction sticks is the bet the whole system rests on.

Published data on that bet comes from the companies involved. Klarna, which rolled Nift gifts out to all its U.S. users in 2025, told Retail Touchpoints that 88% of recipients rate the gifts positively, 40% of offered gifts get activated, and 72% of recipients say the gift changed their view of the funding brand for the better. Independent measurement of those figures has not been published.

Claiming a gift is optional at every step, and skepticism toward an unexpected offer is reasonable. Those two checks are how to resolve it.

The surprise is the point. A company you know says thanks, a company you don’t know picks up the tab, and Nift makes the match in between.