How Raise Helps Consumers Save Money And Earn Rewards

Benzinga will be holding its annual Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, a day of dealmaking, networking, and recognition in the financial technology space, on Nov. 10, 2020.

In recognition of those disruptive innovators creating positive and diverse change within the financial services space, Benzinga chatted with Jay Klauminzer, CEO at Raise.

About Raise

In many homes are drawers filled with unused gift cards. The problem with unused gift cards: consumers waste millions.

Founded in 2010, Raise is a fintech specializing in payments. The company offers consumers a marketplace where they can buy and sell unwanted gift cards, as well as a contactless method to pay for everyday purchases in-store or online.

Product Portfolio

The company’s core offering consists of the Raise and Slide.

“We have the traditional Raise gift card marketplace and Slide mobile payments,” the CEO said. “Raise started out as a gift card marketplace, solving the problem of unused or unwanted gift cards. You come on and sell them to get cash in your pocket and, on the flip side, the buyers get a discount on what they wanted.”

After tremendous success with Raise Pay, an extension of the marketplace that lets users make big gift card purchases without buying multiple gift cards, the company introduced Slide.

“It’s a standalone, purpose-built payments app with hundreds of retailers covering hundreds of thousands of stores, and there’s a couple of big benefits. The first is that you get 4% cashback. The second is that it’s contactless.”

Innovation Outlook

In light of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the digital transformation in payments accelerated the growth of Raise and Slide, which doesn't require merchants to adopt costly new hardware to accept.

“With COVID, it’s clean, convenient, and safe,” the CEO said. “I got laughed at over a year ago when I said we would be cashless within the next decade because some people thought that was insane, but paying with your mobile phone solves a lot of problems.”

That said, Raise sees more innovation in the payments experience, as well as increased coverage.

“The technology platform itself opens so much for retailers to be able to market their products differently,” Klauminzer said. “Retailers can start to get very segmented in their offering. It gives them so much more power when they’re thinking about where to spend their marketing dollars.”

“Ultimately, we want to be accepted everywhere you shop.”

To learn more about Raise, click here.