FinTech News
Benjamin Acquires New Things for “Money Moments” Expansion
A growing cashback app has revealed a new acquisition and funding round.
About the acquisition:
Benjamin Capital Partners has announced its acquisition of Austin-based startup New Things Co. As a result, Benjamin intends to integrate New Things’ proprietary augmented reality rewards into its app. Specifically, the company says the feature will be added to its cash rewards platform Benjamin Money Moments, which currently allows customers to earn rewards for making purchases, gaming, viewing ads, and more.
With the acquisition, New Thing co-founders Aubrey Johnson and Jason Bender will take on roles at Benjamin. Johnson will become EVP Product Strategy while Bender has been named EVP Technology. Both will report to Benejamin’s founder and Chief Product Officer Erno Tauriainen.
Notably, Johnson and Bender were previously members of the team behind Dosh. That cashback app was purchased by Cardlytics for $275 million in 2021. Currently, in addition to being a standalone app, Dosh powers card-linked merchant cashback offers for various platforms.
Along with the acquisition news, Benjamin announced that it had raised $13 million in capital. This includes both debt and equity. Existing investors Play Ventures and Big Bets VC participated in the round. This follows a $5.5 million seed round in March of this year.
What they’re saying:
Commenting on the acquisition, Tauriainen said, “I’m pleased and excited to announce our acquisition of New Thing Co. By bringing Jason and Aubrey on board, we’re not only adding top-tier talent with unparalleled experience in cash-back and user engagement, but we’re also gaining cutting-edge AR technology that will revolutionize how consumers interact with brands, merchants, and games.”
Meanwhile, Johnson reflected on the experience he’s bringing to Benjamin, stating, “We are honored and thrilled to join the Benjamin team as they continue to have incredible success in the consumer rewards space. At Dosh, we built a premier cash rewards engine whose success was a function of creating a world-class user experience, supported by sophisticated technology. We are eager to apply this expertise to this company’s mission to put one or more Benjamins in every user’s wallet every single month.”
My thoughts:
Full disclosure: I’ve had Benjamin installed on my phone for months but haven’t had a chance to truly explore it. Now that I know that two people involved with Dosh (which remains one of my favorite cashback apps) are joining the Benjamin team, I’m far more interested in checking it out. What’s more, even if AR experiences can be gimmicky, I do think that using the medium for rewards earning could be pretty cool. In other words, I look forward to seeing more from Benjamin following this acquisition.
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