San Francisco based startup Gyft, co-founded by South African Vinny Lingham has announced that it plans to accept Bitcoins for purchases of gift cards from anywhere in the world.

Gyft aims to “disrupt” the multi-billion dollar gift card industry as a “Mobile Gift Card Platform” that allows smartphone users to “upload, buy and redeem gift cards conveniently from their mobile device”.

The startup’s founders say it has over 200 online retailers including GAP, Burger King, Nike and others who are signed up to its service.

And the San Francisco based startup plans today to mark the international launch of its application that accepts Bitcoins globally. This move follows Gyft testing out Bitcoin payments in beta mode in the United States.

The startup’s announcement regarding the acceptance of Bitcoins could be a step further in making the virtual decentralised currency more “acceptable” but it may come with risks as well.

Bitcoins have in recent weeks been in the spotlight after a large drop (from a dollar exchange rate high of $266 to $70) in their value. Experts say the sharp drop mainly came about as a result of one of the most used and liquid Bitcoin currency exchanges, MTGox, having had its systems crash because of the rising popularity of the currency and reported DDoS attacks.

Although there are other Bitcoin currency exchanges, the majority of trades take place on MTGox.

“Virtual currencies are the way of the future of the internet - it cannot flourish without them. Bitcoin is the first, and possibly will become the dominant standard, but others may emerge as more niches appear,” Lingham told ITWeb Africa.

He added, “The biggest motivation is security of payment, guaranteed to us. No chargebacks and very low cost.”