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About Raise
Raise is a gift card and loyalty platform that brings retail gift cards onchain: users buy brand cards in the app with USDC, BTC and other assets, settlement runs through its stablecoin, and cards are delivered digitally for use at partner merchants. The plan extends points and membership into transferable onchain assets.
It targets the lack of everyday spending outlets for crypto, where cashing out runs through exchanges and banks with friction and a paper trail. Gift cards cover a large set of physical merchants with a short chain and a checkout-like experience. The limit is that this is a centralized business: card sourcing, settlement and compliance all sit with the operator, so users trust a company rather than a contract, brand and country coverage is limited, and cross-border use is bound by issuer terms.
Founded in 2013 by George Bousis, Raise launched as a gift card marketplace where users could buy and sell discounted gift cards. It secured $18.1 million in funding that same year, followed by $56 million from New Enterprise Associates in 2015.
In 2022, Bousis decided to pivot toward blockchain, investing approximately $25 million from company profits to build an on-chain platform. In February 2025, Raise completed a $63 million strategic round led by Haun Ventures to develop "Smart Cards" — a blockchain-based gift card system using stablecoin settlement, designed to reduce payment costs and enhance fraud prevention. Cumulative funding reached approximately $220 million.
Raise disclosed in February 2026 that its SmartCards on-chain gift-card product was processing over $11M in monthly on-chain volume; on March 26 it enabled Solana payments for Uber, letting users pay for rides with SOL and have ride credits applied automatically, with funds routed through Raise's existing gift-card system and converted to usable balance at checkout without Uber directly accepting crypto. SmartCards already run on Solana mainnet, turning crypto assets into programmable gift cards spendable at millions of merchants.
Future strategy and roadmap: Going forward, Raise plans to launch the $RAISE token in the first half of 2026 to support the Raise Network's on-chain loyalty and payments ecosystem; via SmartCards and the Retail Alliance Foundation it plans to open gift-card standards to more brands and issuers, building a cross-merchant, programmable loyalty and payments rail, and to keep linking crypto payments with discounted gift cards and rewards to bridge digital assets and everyday global commerce.
George Bousis — Founder & Executive Chairman; launched the Raise gift-card marketplace in 2013; also founder of CouponTrade.
Jay Klauminzer — CEO; ex-VP at DoorDash and Groupon executive.
Nitin Shingate — CTO; formerly at Overstock.
Vikram Raghavan — President & Chief Product Officer; ex-Overstock and its blockchain spinoff tZERO.