This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Type of business | Privately owned |
---|---|
Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Area served | United States |
Founder(s) | George Bousis, Bradley Wasz |
CEO | Jay Klauminzer |
Industry | eCommerce |
URL | www |
Launched | 2013 |
Raise.com is an e-commerce platform owned and operated by Raise that enables third-party individuals to sell Gift Cards on a fixed-price online marketplace alongside Raise's regular offerings. [1] The company is based in Chicago, Illinois, and was launched in 2013 by founder George Bousis, who still remains the Executive Chairman today alongside CEO Jay Klauminzer.
Raise.com was initially conceived as a spinoff of another service created by Bousis and Bradley Wasz, called CouponTrade, which was founded in 2010. [2]
Since that time, the marketplace became more amenable to Bousis' idea. As stated by Crain's Chicago Business column, "a 2009 federal law prevented gift cards from expiring for five years; cards went from a magnetic stripe to all-digital in 2010; and advances in mobile technology made it possible to buy and sell cards on a smartphone." [3]
Founded in 2013, Raise.com received $18 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Funding. [2] [4] A second round of funding in 2015 saw $56M in Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates. [5] [6] [7] [8]
In August 2015, Raise.com acquired Tastebud Technologies for an undisclosed amount. Its CEO, Tyler Spalding, took the Chief Strategy Officer role within Raise.com. [9] [10]
In June 2016, Raise acquired Slide for an undisclosed amount in stock, a company which allows people to store gift cards in a digital wallet/passbook. Raise also announced plans to open a New York office. [11] [12]
As of 2016, the company is valued at about $1 billion, as presented by the New York Times. [5] [13]
In September 2017, Raise raised $60M in Round C funding to expand its mobile payment network. [14]
In late 2018, Raise appointed a new CEO, Jay Klauminzer, a marketplace veteran from Groupon and DoorDash. [15]
Raise.com takes a 12% cut from the sale of every gift card. [16]
In the period between funding – in 2014, Raise.com released a mobile app (iOS only) version of its marketplace. [17] [18]
Raise.com also has partnerships with "over a dozen undisclosed retailers so far who are interested in the sorts [of] consumer shopping insights Raise can provide." [6] [16]
Raise has a one-year money back guarantee on purchases made directly through the marketplace.
In 2020, the company also launched two new products based on learnings from their marketplace. Slide, a mobile payments app, offers 4% cash back at a few hundred retailers. Users receive a 1% bonus when adding funds to their account (which also speeds checkout). Users select a merchant, enter the amount of spend, and are then issued a barcode that can be scanned at the register or typed in online. Slide peaked at #17 on the iOS store in December 2020. rZero is a fraud detection platform that was originally built for Raise to address gift card fraud, but it's now used widely across FinTech and other high risk use cases.
Some users of Raise.com have experienced gift card fraud, typically executed by people who steal items under the return receipt requirements of stores and then requesting gift cards. [19] [20] Generally, customer service regarding fraudulent gift cards receives minimal complaints, and most receive a 100%+ refund. As AdvisoryHQ states, "Many of the negative Raise reviews on this review site are from buyers who waited until after Raise's 100-day money back guarantee had expired before trying to use their gift card – only to discover that the card was invalid or had a different value than expected." [21] [22] Now the company offers a 365-day money-back guarantee instead.
While Raise has not publicly commented on this, their terms of service state that any user who attempts to sell an "invalid card" will be subjected to a sale price reversal and may be liable for the 12% sales commission. Additionally, the account holder may be charged a "card refund fee" in the greater amount – $20 or 15% of the gift card sale price. [23]
Wix.com Ltd. is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It offers tools for creating HTML5 websites and mobile sites using online drag-and-drop editing. Along with its headquarters and other offices in Israel, Wix also has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, and Singapore.
TouchNote is a mobile app for smartphones, tablets and website for sending printed, personalized postcards, greeting cards, other photo products as well as gifts.
Smule is an American mobile app developer with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company specializes in developing social music-making and collaboration applications for iOS, Android, and Web.
delivery.com LLC is an American online platform and suite of mobile apps that enables users to order from local restaurants and stores for on-demand delivery. The company currently has more than one million users and an online marketplace of more than 12,000 restaurants, wine and liquor stores, grocery stores, and laundry/dry cleaning providers.
Braintree is a Chicago-based company that primarily deals in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies. The company was acquired by PayPal on 26 September 2013.
Udemy, Inc. is an education technology company that provides an online learning and teaching platform. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
Belly was founded in August 2011 in Chicago by Logan LaHive and Craig Ulliott, receiving its initial round of around $3M in funding from Chicago-based venture capital firm Lightbank.
Base CRM is an enterprise software company based in Mountain View, California with R&D offices located in Kraków, Poland. It provides a web-based all-in-one sales platform that features tools for email, phone dialing, pipeline management, forecasting, reporting and more. Base's platform is available on iOS and Android, and was the first full native CRM Android app available. On September 10, 2018 Base was acquired by Zendesk and later rebranded as Zendesk Sell.
“BillGuard” was a personal finance security and productivity company. Its mobile and website application scans credit card and debit card transactions, alerting users to possible scams, billing errors, fraudulent charges and hidden fees.
MobiKwik is an Indian payment service provider founded in 2009 that provides a mobile phone-based payment system and digital wallet. Customers can add money to an online wallet that can be used for payments. In 2013 the Reserve Bank of India authorized the company's use of the MobiKwik wallet, and in May 2016 the company began providing small loans to consumers as part of its service.
Starling Bank is a British bank, occasionally referred to as a digital challenger bank or neobank, providing current and business bank accounts in the United Kingdom. Starling Bank is a licensed and regulated bank, founded by former Allied Irish Banks COO, Anne Boden, in January 2014. Since its founding, it has received over £500M of funding.
Carousell is a Singaporean smartphone and web-based consumer to consumer and business to consumer marketplace for buying and selling new and secondhand goods. Headquartered in Singapore, it also operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Carousell is available on both iOS and Android devices.
Chuck Dietrich is an American entrepreneur and current CEO of MileIQ. Prior to MileIQ, Dietrich worked at Salesforce.com and was the CEO at SlideRocket before facilitating its sale to VMWare and its eventual divestment to ClearSlide. Dietrich is also credited as one of the early adopters of wing foiling in the San Francisco Bay Area having started in early 2019.
Letgo was a company that provided a website and app that allows users to buy from, sell to and chat with others locally. The products launched in 2015.
Monzo Bank Limited, trading as Monzo, is a British online bank based in London, England. Monzo was one of the earliest of a number of new app-based challenger banks in the UK.
Doorman was a privately held American technology company specializing in logistics services and products. The company managed and operated fulfillment centers and independent driver fleets in densely-populated urban areas, addressing the last mile gap between online retailers and their customers. It also developed, marketed and operated the Doorman mobile app, which allowed consumers to use their iOS or Android-based smartphone to schedule evening delivery of goods purchased online, or arrange pick up of goods intended to be shipped back to an online retailer.
Alejandro Carlos "Alec" Oxenford is an Argentine entrepreneur. He co-founded OLX, and co-founded letgo, a mobile classified ad app in the United States.
Snap Inc. is a technology company, founded on September 16, 2011, by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown based in Santa Monica, California. The company developed and maintains technological products and services, namely Snapchat, Spectacles, and Bitmoji. The company was named Snapchat Inc. at its inception, but it was rebranded Snap Inc. on September 24, 2016, in order to include the Spectacles product under the company name.
Curve is a payment card that aggregates multiple payment cards through its accompanying mobile app, allowing a user to make payments and withdrawals from a single card. It lets you "switch the bank card you paid with after each transaction is complete." Curve named this feature "Back in time".
Foursquare Labs Inc., commonly known as Foursquare, is a geolocation technology company and data cloud platform based in the United States. Founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai in 2009, the company rose to prominence with the launch of its local search-and-discovery mobile app. The app, Foursquare City Guide, popularized the concept of real-time location sharing and checking-in.