WeGift Closes $12 Million Series A+ Round to Accelerate Growth of Digital Payouts Platform
Commerzbank-backed VC Fund CommerzVentures Joins Round, Strengthening FinTech Ties
LONDON, March 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeGift closes additional financing in $12 million funding round and welcomes new investor CommerzVentures, the FinTech-focused venture capital fund backed by Commerzbank. CommerzVentures joins existing investors, AlbionVC, who led the fundraise, as well as Stride.VC, SAP.iO Fund, and Unilever Ventures.
WeGift has already captured significant market share in the B2B digital rewards industry with customers like Habito, Perkbox, Seated, and Vodafone. They plan to invest heavily in go-to-market hiring, product development, and expanding into the U.S. This round will establish WeGift as the universal digital payouts platform for businesses.
"Currently payments are a one-way street," said WeGift Founder and CEO Aron Alexander. "Existing solutions enable businesses to take money from consumers, but they don't let them easily send it back. They're stuck using banking and credit card networks that are slow, expensive, and poorly-suited for payouts. We help companies instantly transfer value to the people they care about," he added.
The funding round occurs at a time when companies across all industries are looking to create digital-first experiences with their global audiences, whether external-facing like customers or internal-facing like employees. By removing friction from the payouts process, WeGift's cloud-based platform and open API solution serve a broad set of needs for medium and enterprise businesses, including acquisition, retention, recognition, and reimbursements.
"The $700 billion rewards and incentives industry is ripe for disruption," said CommerzVentures Partner Heiko Schwender who will serve as a WeGift board advisor. "With the mass adoption of all-digital, work-from-everywhere and live-from-anywhere, there's an even greater need for a global, on-demand, instant payouts solution," he added. The CommerzVentures portfolio includes banking infrastructure leaders such as Marqeta and Mambu, and will be instrumental in shaping the future of global financial services.
Sending disbursements, incentives, and non-cash payouts is manual, expensive, time-consuming, and error prone. WeGift changes this by removing friction from the payouts process, so businesses can instantly transfer value to build relationships with the people they care about. Operating in more than 30 countries, and dozens of languages and currencies, WeGift's digital payouts platform and open API solution is directly integrated into every brand on its platform, offering corporate buyers the only true global network with direct access to more than 700 brands. Habito, Perkbox, Seated, Sodexo, Vodafone, and Vouchercodes all rely on WeGift to digitally engage their audiences.
AlbionVC helps build the future of enterprise software. With 20+ years of experience in technology investments, the team focuses on B2B software and healthcare at Series A. AlbionVC manages £500m of venture funds, currently invested in over 50 companies. AlbionVC is the technology investment arm of Albion Capital Group LLP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Launched in 2014, CommerzVentures is a specialist fintech investor with €250m under management. CommerzVentures backs early and growth stage companies in the areas of financial services and insurance (and related technologies) across Europe, Israel and the US. Portfolio companies have scalable and attractive business models, show success in their markets and need investments to support further growth.
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