Ansaa startup that helps merchants develop and offer branded virtual wallets, has raised a $14 million Series A funding round, the company told TechCrunch exclusively.
Renegade Partners led Ansa’s latest funding, which included participation from existing backers Bain Capital Ventures, BoxGroup and Wischoff Ventures and new investor B37 Ventures. With this latest raise, Ansa has raised a total of nearly $20 million in venture capital, including a $5.4 million seed round;. The company declined to disclose its current valuation, saying only the Series A was raised “at a significant valuation multiple.”
Specifically, female investors — including Renata Quintini of Renegade Partners, Nichole Wischoff of Wischoff Ventures, Bain Capital’s Christina Mela-Kyriazi, BoxGroup’s Nimi Katragadda and former Affirm executor Silvija Martincevic — contributed 95.6% of the Series A round, the company said.
Founded in 2022 by former Adyen product manager Sophia Goldberg and former Affirm software engineer JT Cho, San Francisco-based Ansa is building what it describes as a white-label digital wallet infrastructure to help businesses process small payments and offset high credit card fees for smaller transactions.
Or as Goldberg describes it, Ansa is creating a “wallet as a service,” or integrated customer balances, to allow any merchant to launch a branded flexible payment instrument.
This can be similar to the Starbucks in-app payment experience where a customer loads money. It may also allow a merchant to finance with incentives or refunds. Ansa claims that using its first API platform, a merchant can create a wallet “within weeks, not quarters.”
“Branded customer wallets enable merchants to offer a payment solution that best fits their use cases while increasing customer loyalty and frequency,” CEO Goldberg told TechCrunch. “Additionally, marketers can boost revenue streams and boost customer loyalty. With Ansa, merchants can drive adoption of their wallets by integrating customer balances with their rewards, incentives and other loyalty initiatives.”
Ansa focuses on coffee, quick service restaurant (QSR) and vertical markets as its initial core markets. Retail stores and convenience stores are other target markets.
Using a branded wallet also helps these types of merchants avoid paying credit card fees, which can be high, especially for the dollar amount of some of the purchases.
For example, Goldberg noted that a $4 latte paid for by credit card can have an additional charge of more than 12.5 percent. A typical e-commerce transaction could be 2.9% and $0.30. The flat fee is extremely impactful on smaller transactions, Goldberg argues, as it represents a higher percentage when the transaction size is smaller.
“A 30-cent fee on a $5 transaction is a higher percentage of total revenue and will impact margins more than it would on a $100 transaction,” Goldberg added. “For merchants with tight margins, these flat fees can significantly reduce revenue.”
Image Credits: Ansa
In the first quarter of 2024, Goldberg said the startup doubled its customer base compared to the previous year, though she declined to disclose hard customer or revenue figures.
Ansa generates revenue through a combination of platform fees and note on the transaction.
“We’re part infrastructure, part revenue generation, so we charge for services and value-added,” Goldberg said.
The funding will go largely to product development and engineering. The company currently employs 12 people and is hiring.
Renegade Partners’ Quintini told TechCrunch that her firm’s investment in Ansa marks its largest first check to date.
“Because Ansa integrates with most modern PSPs (payment service providers), including Square, Stripe and Braintree, new merchants can scale immediately to start driving both engagement and operational efficiency,” he told TechCrunch. adding that the technology helps “any merchant to offer their customers a seamless experience similar to the Starbucks app.”
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