JunoWallet scores big as its mobile wallet for gift cards goes viral
In a sign that we are living in a truly mobile world, mobile gift cards are taking off like crazy.
During the holidays, grocery store clerks cheered whenever Chris Sweis, the chief mobile officer at JunoWallet, showed up to buy gift cards. That was because he gave the stores some huge business, buying every single iTunes card on the racks in the store.
He took them back to the office so employees, like Abel Jimenez … Continue Reading
Presents for social gifting service Wrapp: $5M more funding, Reid Hoffman joins board
Who says gift cards aren’t cool? After landing $5.5 million in a first round of funding last November, social gifting service Wrapp, which lets you easily send gift cards to friends through Facebook, today announced that it’s received an additional $5 million for the round led by Greylock Partners and international VC firm Atomico.
Adding even more cred to the company is LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, a partner at Greylock, who will be joining Wrapp’s … Continue Reading
So long, missed birthdays: Wrapp lands $5.5M for awesome social gifting
Gift giving just got a whole lot easier. The social gifting company Wrapp, currently only available in Sweden, has snagged $5.5 million in a first round of funding to bring its innovative service to the United States and United Kingdom.
There’s certainly plenty of room to innovate in the gift card arena, and it’s also a lucrative market, accounting for $100 billion annual sales in the U.S. alone.
Using friend birthday data from your Facebook … Continue Reading
CardPool lets you cash in gift cards for Facebook Credits
This holiday season should be a crazy time for gift-card exchanges, where users can unload unwanted cards. And one of those exchanges, CardPool, just added a novel way to pay you for those cards: with Facebook Credits.
CardPool makes money by buying gift cards off users at a discount, then reselling them. For example, if you’ve received a $50 gift card at a store that you’ll never shop at, you could sell it to CardPool … Continue Reading
Plastic Jungle raises $10M for a place to exchange and sell gift cards
I’m not a particular fan of gift cards. There are few things worse than getting a gift card for Christmas to some store I’ve never heard of — or worse, one I hate. Hopefully that’s about to change with Plastic Jungle, a provider of a marketplace for trading and selling gift cards.
Plastic Jungle announced today that it has raised $10 million in its third round of funding led by Jafco Ventures to help consumers … Continue Reading
Bank middle-manager BankSimple raises $2.9M to not be a bank
BankSimple, the not-quite-a-bank provider of front-end services for a number of treasury-focused banks, raised $2.9 million in its first round of funding. First Round Capital, IA Ventures and Village Ventures led the round.
Again, BankSimple is not a bank. It’s a provider that manages user experiences for banks. Chief executive Joshua Reich likened it to the way gift-card operators work.
The company partners with banks that are exclusively interested in the back-end parts of banking … Continue Reading
