Treat

treat logo

Inspiration

Gifting has always been one of the most natural expressions of human connection. People love surprising those they care about with food, gifts, services, and experiences. Yet in practice, this experience is fragmented and requires multiple apps, coordination overhead, or defaulting to simple money transfers that lose the emotional intent behind the gesture.

We noticed a gap: while the desire to give is universal, the infrastructure to support meaningful, real-world gifting at scale simply didn’t exist in a simple, unified way.

At the same time, millions of local businesses around the globe, from food street vendors to restaurants, massage parlors to nail salons, electronic stores to hotels all struggle to consistently reach customers without investing heavily in marketing, platforms, or digital storefronts.

Treat was born from the idea of bridging these two worlds: preserving the spirit of gifting while building a system that empowers local businesses everywhere at zero cost to these businesses.

What it does

Treat is a global gifting platform that allows anyone, anywhere in the world, to send meaningful surprises directly to people they care about.

Instead of sending generic value or money, users send real-world experiences such as meals, gifts, services, and moments from local businesses near the recipient. Senders pay a small service fee on each treat sent.

Recipients are notified, claim their Treat, and enjoy it either in person or via delivery depending on the merchant setup.

Treat works at no cost to merchants or businesses, they simply sign up, get verified and list their products.

How we built it

Treat is a distributed, cloud-native platform built for global scale and real-world gifting workflows. The frontend is built with react/vite and deployed on Vercel through github integration, while backend APIs are built with ruby & rails api running on ECS Fargate containers in AWS. I chose this architecture so that, the standalone backend api can support both the current web interface and future mobile app clients.

Data is managed using Amazon Aurora postgres database, providing durable, highly available storage for users, merchants, payments, and claim flows. Authentication supports email/password, MFA, and OAuth (Google sign-in) for secure and flexible onboarding for both users and merchants.

Real-time SMS and email notifications power the gifting and claim experience, while payments are processed via Paystack and Stripe for secure, reliable transactions. The system is built on AWS infrastructure with maximum security built in to ensure scalability and resilience across the globe. (See Architecture diagram for more details)

Challenges we ran into

Building Treat required rethinking the traditional e-commerce model.

Unlike a typical online purchase involving only a buyer and seller, Treat coordinates three participants; the sender, the recipient, and the merchant while preserving the excitement and trust that make gifting meaningful.

Delivery - Moved to v2 To keep the MVP focused, we postponed delivery to a future release. Treat currently supports secure in-person collection at participating merchants. Delivery logistics vary significantly across countries, so we plan to partner with local delivery providers as we expand into new markets.
Payments Supporting cross-border gifting introduced two key challenges:
1. Providing simple, affordable payment options for senders.
2. Instantly releasing funds to merchants once a recipient successfully verifies and redeems a treat.

Because payment infrastructure differs by country, we decided to launch market by market, partnering with payment providers that best support our business model.

Treat is currently live in Ghana, with Nigeria and the United Kingdom planned as the next expansion markets.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Key achievements include:

Successfully launched Treat in Ghana, with expansion to additional markets planned.
Built a complete end-to-end gifting platform where users can send, claim, verify, and redeem real-world treats through local businesses.
Created a platform that enables local businesses to join and reach new customers at no cost, without building their own websites or running expensive marketing campaigns.
Designed a secure redemption workflow that instantly releases merchant payouts after recipient verification.

What we learned

Building Treat taught us that gifting is far more than a payment or transaction but rather, it's an emotional experience.

The hardest problem wasn't processing payments; it was designing a journey that preserves the surprise, thoughtfulness, and trust between the sender, recipient, and merchant.

We also learned that local businesses become more discoverable when they're part of meaningful moments in people's lives, not just another listing or advertisement.

What's next for Treat

Our vision is to make meaningful gifting effortless while helping local businesses reach more customers around the world.

Next, we aim to:

Expand to additional countries as payment partnerships are established.
Launch native Android and iOS mobile apps.
Introduce local delivery options through country-specific delivery partners.
Enable corporate gifting and employee rewards for businesses and organizations.
Expand communication channels with WhatsApp and other messaging integrations.

Our long-term goal is for Treat to become the global platform for thoughtful gifting while helping local businesses grow through meaningful customer connections.