The tech for gifting wasn't implemented in Trove early on. There were genuine concerns about fraud that are still true today. Because the game isn't built for gifting, it would have to be a manual process as you described.

This isn't a matter of laziness, it's a reality that our support team cannot be expected to handle all existing support inquiries for all games, plus manually moving purchased items from one account to another, and any other issues that would arise, such as moving a gift to an incorrect account due to a typo in what's provided, and a slew of other concerns with account security and billing fraud.

There are a huge number of downsides, so this isn't something likely to change. We'd benefit from more players making purchases, regardless of what account those purchases are on, so us choosing not to go down that road is because there are very real risks associated with implementing that sort of manual process.