This holiday season you can stand in long lines or surf the Net for the perfect gift

ATLANTA (CNN) -- It's a few days before Christmas. The lines at the stores are long, and if you have to mail something ... well, forget it.

So if you've shopped 'til you've dropped and still can't find that perfect gift, there are always gift certificates. And the Internet is allowing people to buy -- and send -- gift certificates at the last minute.

At some sites, the giver chooses the store where the gift certificate will be used. A person who receives the gift certificate can choose from a list of stores where it can be spent.

Or, shoppers can buy directly from various stores' Web sites, and now there are Web sites that give you a selection of those stores.

"I can search by location. I can search by type of company and then by category," said Doug Nielsen, of the Nebraska- based Giftpoint.com.

The new player in this game is Webcertificate.com, a Web site where the gift giving and the shopping are done online. The giver fills out a form -- and for a fee the company e-mails the recipient a virtual gift certificate.

Once recipients open the e-mail and verify who they are, they click to the Webcertificate site. There they get an account number that serves as a debit card, letting them shop anywhere -- as long as it's online.

"The part that's really unique, and the part we have a patent pending on, is the ability for one person to send via e-mail to another person monetary value that they can use anywhere online," Matt Gillin, president of C/Base, the electronic marketing company behind the site.

Webcertificate.com acts as a bank, keeping gift certificate money accounts.

Recipients have one year to spend the money. If they don't spend it, they have the option to apply the remaining money to their credit card balance.

Science Correspondent Ann Kellan contributed to this report.