GuShiio.com Crypto gift card platform Raise announced that it has completed a strategic financing of US$63 million, led by Haun Ventures and Raj Gokal, co-founder of Paper Ventures, Selini Capital, GSR and blockchain Solana, participated. This round of financing brought Raise’s total financing amount to exceed US$220 million.
Author: Weilin, PANews
On February 26, Fortune reported that cryptographic gift card platform Raise announced that it had completed a strategic financing of US$63 million, led by Haun Ventures, and Raj Gokal, co-founder of Paper Ventures, Selini Capital, GSR and blockchain Solana, participated. Although the company did not disclose the valuation of this round of financing, the amount of financing and the background of investors have attracted attention.
The round brings Raise’s total funding to more than $220 million, with previous investments from Accel, Paypal and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
Entering Web3 from traditional gift card trading platforms
Raise was founded in 2013 by George Bousis. At the time, Bousis, who had just graduated from college for two years, noticed that gift cards were flooding the U.S. market, but consumers had no place to sell them. So he launched a platform that allows users to trade discounted gift cards for Fortune 500 brands like Airbnb, Wal-Mart and Instacart. Since then, Raise has facilitated more than $5 billion in gift card purchases and sales on its platform.
In his view, the gift card industry, like much payment infrastructure, has a chaotic situation where many companies overlap and intertwine, such as money processing companies, card manufacturers and distributors, card issuing banks, and compliance companies.
However, as blockchain technology matures, Bousis realized that blockchain can bring deeper changes to the gift card industry-not only eliminating intermediaries and reducing transaction costs, but also improving transaction security and preventing gift card fraud.
Currently, Raise has three products: Raise App, API solutions and gift card trading market.
“I started exploring tokenizing gift cards early in 2014,” he said. He realized that issuing blockchain-based gift cards was impossible in the 2010s, but he has been following the crypto industry. By 2022, he believes that technology has developed to a mature enough level to be ready for this change. He said that over the next two and a half years, the company will invest approximately US$25 million, which will come from the company’s profit and balance sheet to build a blockchain platform.
George Bousis believes that blockchain technology can simplify the payment system that gift cards have been around for decades. He said he would eventually invest more than $100 million to build what he called “smart cards.”
Has partnered with the Polkadot Community Foundation to support crypto wallets
Unlike the habits of Asian countries, gift cards have become almost a “necessity” for American consumers every holiday season. They often surpass popular items such as AirPods, PlayStation or popular vinyl albums and become the first choice for holiday gifts. According to market data, about 40% of consumers ‘total holiday spending is used to purchase gift cards. These gift cards are popular not only because of their convenience and flexibility, but also because they can meet the needs of both the giver and recipient.
After consumers purchase gift cards, they usually redeem them within six months, and the redemption rate exceeds 70%. However, over time, gift card usage will decline. Research shows that by one year, less than 80% of gift cards are redeemed.
In Raise’s encrypted gift card process, consumers purchase gift cards from participating retailers and deposit funds with Raise, which then uses stablecoins to hold the funds for the retailer. Once the customer uses the gift card, Raise transfers funds from the escrow account to the retailer through ACH (a U.S. electronic payment network) or stablecoin. Bousis said the current payment process is affected by changing regulations.
Bousis believes that the system, which will eventually be decentralized through a nonprofit organization and cryptocurrency, is cheaper than current gift card payment infrastructure. And, because records are stored in an unmanned permanent database, this promises to make the system more secure and prevent fraud. Currently, Raise only issues digital gift cards, not physical gift cards.
Currently, Raise has expanded into the blockchain payments industry through a partnership with the Polkadot Community Foundation (PCF) and plans to integrate it into DOT Wallet. In addition, the company also added support for digital wallets such as MetaMask, Phantom, and Coinbase Wallet in August 2024 through its cooperation with WalletConnect.
Bousis said retailers are interested. Although he wouldn’t disclose which retailers they were, he said he was working with Fortune 500 companies and “the biggest brands.”
With the announcement of the financing news, Raise welcomes new board members. Board members include former crypto executive Marco Santori, who was the chief legal officer of crypto exchange Kraken, and Bjorn Wagner, who was the CEO of Parity Technologies, the company behind Polkadot’s blockchain. In addition, Raise appointed George Ruan, co-founder and former CEO of Honey, and Matt Maloney, founder and former CEO of GrubHub.
Bousis declined to disclose the company’s valuation at the time of financing. He said the financing valuation would not be lower than the startup’s valuation at the time of its Series D funding round, which was valued at $675 million, according to PitchBook data. The financing included primary and secondary equity sales and token subscription rights (the crypto startup promises a portion of the unreleased cryptocurrency to a venture capital firm). He also said that the US$63 million was raised through crypto investments not because Rasie faced a funding shortage, but that Raise’s business, which has been operating for more than a decade, is currently profitable. As a result, the payment process in the gift card industry may usher in a transformation. In the future, with strong financing support and extensive retailer cooperation, Raise may bring a new growth catalyst to the Web3 consumer track.
References:
https://fortune.com/2025/02/26/exclusive-raise-nets-63-million-in-round-led-by-haun-ventures-to-build-a-crypto-platform-for-gift-cards/
