FinTech News
Branded Customer Wallets FinTech Ansa Raises $14 Million
A FinTech that helps businesses create stored value payment programs has raised a fresh round of funding.
About the round:
Ansa has announced a new $14 million round. The Series A was led by Renegade Partners while Bain Capital Ventures, B37 Ventures, Box Group, and Wischoff Ventures also participated. This latest round comes almost exactly one year after a seed round, bringing the company’s total funds raised to $19.4 million.
According to Ansa, this funding will allow it to broaden the depth of its payment solutions. This includes a focus on product development and engineering, with the ultimate goal of enabling merchants to better engage with customers.
About Ansa:
Ansa helps companies launch what they call branded customer wallets. Using the service’s APIs and SDKs, both brick-and-mortar and online retailers can create their own stored value offerings with rewards incentives for customers. In fact, Ansa compared their programs to a “Starbucks app-like experience.” Not only can these options promote loyalty among customers but can also help retailers save on payment processing fees.
The FinTech reports that users of its platform report a 30% increase in average order frequency as well as a 26% rise in revenue. At the same time, retailers see payment fees decline by an average of 28%.
What they’re saying:
Explaining the idea behind Ansa, the company’s CEO and co-founder Sophia Goldberg said, “Commerce has outpaced payments innovation. The technology paradigms we use for payments are decades old. As our world increasingly digitizes, consumers demand better experiences as businesses continue to innovate. Both consumers and merchants deserve more flexibility, which is why we built Ansa.”
Goldberg added, “From marketplaces and microtransactions to convenience stores and quick-serve businesses, modern commerce has changed. At Ansa, we are excited to pioneer solutions that enable merchants to optimize seamless payment strategies, boosting customer engagement, retention, and frequency for sustained growth in today’s competitive market.”
Meanwhile, Renegade Partners managing partner (and newly appointed Ansa board member) Renata Quintini said of the firm, “Ansa is setting a new standard for how we’ll all transact in the future, with a pioneering payments solution that lets merchants trade burdensome credit card processing fees for increased customer lifetime value (LTV). With a CEO that literally wrote the book on payments, Ansa’s branded closed-loop wallet enables merchants to deliver seamless purchasing experiences to their customers — increasing retention, frequency, and overall loyalty.”
My thoughts:
As someone quite familiar with the Starbucks app that Ansa references, its branded customer wallets sound like a great idea for small businesses. From what I can tell, these stored value options provide a win-win for customers and business owners, with the former gaining rewards and the latter saving on payment processing (while also potentially gaining some upfront capital from loyal shoppers). Then again, Ansa’s solutions do have some steep competition as more comprehensive small business options, such as Square, already have similar rewards options built in — albeit without the stored value aspect for the most part.
Still, Ansa’s Series A shows that there’s investor interest in the concept. With this boost, perhaps it will be able to convince more businesses to try their branded wallet solutions, even if it is in addition to their existing payment infrastructure.
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