Ansa, the fintech infrastructure solution enabling merchants to launch branded customer wallets, announced today a $14M Series A funding round. The round was led by Renegade Partners with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, B37 Ventures, Box Group, and Wischoff Ventures. The funding will be used to broaden the depth of Ansa's payment solutions, with a focus on product development and engineering, to empower merchants to better engage their customers.

Merchants spend over $138 billion annually on fees, microtransactions and small transaction volume payments, such as a $4 latte purchase can incur additional costs exceeding 12.5% — a massive burden on businesses. Costs are going up across the board as inflation and high interest rates impact businesses, which according to recent Forrester research, may discourage consumer spending and decrease sales volume. As customer loyalty becomes more unpredictable, enabling consumers to leverage rewards and loyalty incentives to supplement their everyday spending at checkout becomes essential to retaining customers and offsetting customer acquisition costs. Ansa helps brands defend against tightening customer budgets and drive increased frequency.

"Commerce has outpaced payments innovation. The technology paradigms we use for payments are decades old. As our world increasingly digitizes, consumers demand better experiences as businesses continue to innovate. Both consumers and merchants deserve more flexibility, which is why we built Ansa," said Sophia Goldberg, CEO and co-founder of Ansa. "From marketplaces and microtransactions to convenience stores and quick-serve businesses, modern commerce has changed. At Ansa, we are excited to pioneer solutions that enable merchants to optimize seamless payment strategies, boosting customer engagement, retention, and frequency for sustained growth in today's competitive market."

Branded customer wallets enable merchants to offer a payment solution which fits their use cases better, while driving customer loyalty and frequency. Additionally, merchants can enhance revenue streams and foster customer loyalty through efficient transactions that utilize stored balances. With Ansa, merchants can drive adoption of their wallets by seamlessly integrating customer balances with rewards, incentives, and their other loyalty initiatives — easily implementing a Starbucks app-like experience.

Ansa's API-first platform enables merchants to effortlessly launch white-labeled customer wallets for payments and incentives all within a single integrated solution. Platform users have experienced a significant 30% boost in average order frequency and a notable 26% increase in revenue, showcasing the platform's effectiveness in driving business growth and customer engagement.

"Ansa is setting a new standard for how we'll all transact in the future, with a pioneering payments solution that lets merchants trade burdensome credit card processing fees for increased customer lifetime value (LTV)," says Renata Quintini of Renegade Partners, who joins Ansa's board. "With a CEO that literally wrote the book on payments, Ansa's branded closed-loop wallet enables merchants to deliver seamless purchasing experiences to their customers — increasing retention, frequency, and overall loyalty."

Ansa was most recently recognized as one of The Information's Most Promising Startups of 2023 and its inclusion in Money2020's esteemed Startup Network underscores its role as a rising star in the fintech industry. The investment round of which, notably, 95.6% of the funding came from female investors, reflects a positive shift in the fintech funding environment.