Lollya bitcoin rewards and cashback app, has raised an $8 million Series B round, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Adelmansaid the new capital will be used to expand Lolli’s rewards program to corporate partners such as exchanges, neobanks, banks, payment companies and browsers.
To date, Lolli has raised over $28 million. “We’ve historically raised the amount it takes to win,” Adelman said. “We’re not taking more money than we need to support our next phase of growth, and we’re very focused on running efficiently and proving our business model.”
The Series B round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from Sfermion, Ulta Beauty’s Prisma Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, ZebPay CEO Rahul Pagidipati, 2 Punks Capital, MZ Web3 Fund and others. Previous investors Seven Seven Six, Founders Fund’s Pathfinder Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, Logan Paul and MrBeast’s Night Media also invested.
Since its launch in 2018, the app has grown significantly and currently works with more than 25,000 stores. Its rewards program rewards its users with bitcoins or cash back when they shop online or in person at restaurants and stores. “Lolli is on track to expand the number of stores where users can shop to over 100,000 by 2025,” Adelman said.
The app returns up to 30% on purchases, with an average of 7% back in bitcoin or cashback rewards. Since its inception, Lolli has given out more than $10 million in bitcoin rewards, in addition to cash-back rewards, Adelman said.
Last year, the company launched Card Boosts, which allows users to add bitcoin rewards to their debit or credit cards when they shop. Adelman called the product a “huge growth driver” that helped users earn more than five times the rewards on everyday purchases like coffee, gas or groceries. As of October 2023, Lolli’s active shoppers have grown by more than 35% year-over-year, he added.
“Many of our users know the value of ‘winning the dip’ and have seen the benefits of earning bitcoin rewards with Lolli when the market is down,” Adelman said.
This means that users who earned rewards when bitcoin was at or below $20,000 in early 2023 saw the value of their rewards double, given that bitcoin is over $40,000 today. “The first Lolli users who earned bitcoin when it was around $3,000 have seen the value of their rewards increase by more than 10 times today,” Adelman said.
As market players expect a bigger rise from bitcoin growing over 12% every month, Lolli is also gearing up by creating new ways for users to earn rewards. The company plans to use the momentum in the markets to “bring more revenue to partners and bring more big companies to offer bitcoin rewards,” Adelman said. In 2024, Lolli plans to launch more products, “big partnerships” and financial education, he added.
“We’re growing fast, and over the next few months, we’ll be introducing new features and merchant partnerships that we think our users will love,” said Adelman. “As cryptocurrency adoption continues to grow, we are focused on becoming a holistic solution for our users to earn money every day, multiple times a day, and learn and earn bitcoin.”
