WeGift, the London-based startup that has built an “incentive marketing” platform that lets businesses easily issue e-gift cards and other digital rewards to customers, has raised $8 million in new funding.
Dubbed a Series A extension, the round is led by AlbionVC. Existing investors, including Stride.vc, SAP.iO fund and Unilever Ventures, also followed on. Following the fundraise, Ed Lascelles, general partner at AlbionVC, is joining the WeGift board.
WeGift says it will use the additional capital to continue building out its “real-time infrastructure” for digital rewards and incentives. This will include investment in building its supply chain through direct integrations with brands, and product development “that serves corporate marketing teams looking to acquire, activate and retain customers at scale”.
Founded in 2016 by Aron Alexander, WeGift wants to digitise the $700 billion rewards and incentives industry, which is largely still powered by legacy systems built for physical gift cards.
“Currently payments are a one way street,” WeGift’s Alexander told TechCrunch in June. “Payments technology is built to enable businesses to take money from consumers but it doesn’t let businesses send money to consumers.
“We’ve created a new category of digital non-cash rewards to power customer acquisition, retention and loyalty globally: the ‘Twilio for e-gift cards’ ”.
To do this, WeGift offers a “cloud-based, open API” platform that allows businesses to automate sending digital incentives. This is combined with analytics, making it easier to track ROI on incentive marketing campaigns.
Since we last covered the startup, WeGift has grown its network to more than 700 brand partners (such as Nike and Uber) across 30 markets and 20 currencies. It claims “hundreds of clients,” such as Vodafone, Samsung, VoucherCodes, Perkbox and Sodexo, among others.
“We’ve become a favourite of the telecom and energy industry with companies like Vodafone, Utilita, LookAfterMyBills and E.ON using our platform,” Alexander tells me.
WeGift is disclosing 317% in annual revenue growth, but isn’t providing actual revenue numbers. Notably, the company has also opened a New York office.
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