Company: Runa
Founder: Aron Alexander
Website: https://runa.io/
About Runa
Runa is a digital value infrastructure that enables individuals and businesses to pay and get paid by anyone, anywhere, instantly. Runa’s first-of-its-kind payment rail unlocks all forms of digital value – from fractional shares and gift cards to cryptocurrencies and NFTs – seamlessly facilitating instant B2C global payouts and C2B payments regardless of the asset category being used, free of charge for the sender and the recipient.
Runa is revolutionizing the payments industry by addressing one of the modern economy’s most critical challenges – empowering consumers to unlock the full potential of their digital value. The digital currency and digital payment markets are expected to become a multi-trillion-dollar industry within the next decade, but they remain largely siloed, lacking integration with legacy payment systems. As consumers regularly collect, send, and save digital value, they amass billions in the form of gift cards, airline miles, rewards points, and more. While this digital value can be stored easily, it cannot be readily sent, spent and exchanged as desired. Runa’s transformative digital value network and infrastructure enables businesses to adapt to an increasingly mainstream part of the economy in multiple different ways, such as utilizing digital value for mass payouts, while consumers are empowered to spend their accrued value in any way they would like.
For example, businesses traditionally face challenges in handling low-volume, high-velocity transactions such as paying global affiliates, providing customer rebates or providing rewards and recognition to employees around the globe. Runa’s infrastructure supports payouts to these use cases, enabling businesses to transfer digital value instantly, seamlessly, internationally, and at zero cost. Additionally, Runa addresses several key pain points for merchants by giving them ways to increase sales, reach more customers digitally, and grow prepaid spend, helping them convert legacy functions like loyalty programs into drivers of new business.
Runa, headquartered in London, was previously known as WeGift, which was founded in 2016 with the goal of fundamentally transforming how digital value, in the form of gift cards, is sent and spent by organizations, individuals, and merchants. Since then, the company has sent over 22.5M gift cards across 30 countries and 18 currencies. In March 2023, WeGift relaunched as Runa to apply the company’s expertise in the gift card space to encompass all forms of digital value.
Runa operates in partnership with over 1,500 businesses, including M&S, Sodexo, VoucherCodes, Halfords, and more. The sizeable nature of Runa’s network of retailers and merchants enables an ever-larger number of people to use their stored value, encompassing a variety of use cases: HR platforms, loyalty platforms, marketing systems, gift card resellers, disbursement providers, and more. For information about how Runa has impacted its partners, you can see detailed case studies here: https://runa.io/customers
Since its inception, Runa has raised a total of £38.4M in funding, most recently a £26M Series B in November 2022, with investors including Element Ventures, CommerzVentures, Clocktower Ventures, Volution Capital, AlbionVC, and SAP.
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