This Christmas you can send GrabFood and gifts to your loved ones in a different country

The holiday season is upon us and that means it’s time to start thinking about gifts. With many of us still apart from our family and friends, gift-giving can be tougher than usual. For those of us who suck at getting gifts, Grab has provided a couple of solutions.

Grab just launched two new additions to their platform and they both involve international gift-giving. The first is a revamped GrabGifts interface which now allows you to send Grab gift vouchers to anyone located in other Southeast Asian cities. The second one allows you to order from GrabMart or GrabFood for your loved ones in over 100 Southeast Asian cities.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean you can send Malaysian Nasi Lemak to Singapore. You can only order from the regional options available in that city. However, Grab states that your loved one can receive the gift from GrabFood or GrabMart “within an hour”, so it’s a good option for a last-minute present.

How to use GrabGifts

GrabGifts allows you to send vouchers for Grab’s food, mart, express, and transport services. The available countries are Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. Here’s how to send a Grab voucher.

First, open up your Grab app and click on ‘Gifts’ on the main page. Then, tap on ‘Send gift’ and select your contact. The contact needs to be a Grab user, and Grab will tell you to choose another recipient if they aren’t registered with Grab.

Here’s where the personalisation comes in. You can choose up to three services or brands that the recipient can choose from. For example, if you choose Grab Transport, GrabFood, and Starbucks, the recipient can use that voucher for one of those options. The gift value can only be RM10, RM20, RM30, RM50, RM80, and RM100.

After you’re done, you can choose between different digital card designs and customise the message.

How to send food overseas with Grab

You can now order GrabFood or GrabMart for anyone living in the 100+ cities included in this beta. To do so, just order normally and input their address to view the local selections.

Alternatively, you can scroll down on the main page until you see ‘GrabFood and GrabMart to any city’. Once you tap on that, you can choose between food or mart. Then, you can select the country from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Myanmar. After the country, they will show you the eligible cities.

The options available are pretty much only limited to what Grab is already offering in the area. This includes GrabFood partnered restaurants and even groceries from Grab Supermarket and local grocers.

The food pricing will be in foreign currency though, so Grab says that you can only pay via credit card if you’re making overseas deliveries. Also, you can use GrabChat to communicate with the drivers, which includes auto-translation so you can make sure the deliveries get made.