Application of Design Thinking

My hypothetical company is a gift card balance in which you do not need the gift cards in order to use them. The first step in the design thinking is to empathize. I am one who struggles with carrying around my gift cards and in turn ends up not using them. This is a problem because it is incredibly annoying and frustrating as I end up using money instead of the gift card. My idea is to have an app where you can cash in all your coupons and gift cards so that when you go to pay you can just scan a code on your phone. To make a prototype I would require mastery in the skill of creating apps, if I were not the app would not work well enough and would not serve its purpose. To test it I would give myself a $20 gift card to target and attempt to use it at the store.