Update 2: Logan has shared that he received confirmation that there will be two Raise apps owned by Raise as a result of this change. Slide will be rebranded as Raise, while Raise will apparently become Raise Marketplace rather than Raise – Discounted Gift Cards like it is now. Because having two apps selling gift cards called Raise owned by the same company called Raise won’t be at all confusing whatsoever.
Update 11/3/23: Slide sent out the following update today:
Slide Balance
November 13, 2023 will be the last day to incur an additional 1-2% cash back using your Slide Balance. Any remaining Slide Balance in your account as of November 14, 2023 will be converted to Raise Cash. This Raise Cash can be used towards any future purchase on the new Raise app. However, redeeming this Raise Cash will not earn you an additional 1-2% cash back, so we encourage you to redeem your Slide Balance as soon as possible.Earnings Withdrawal
November 13, 2023 will be the last day to withdraw your cash earnings of $15 or more via Venmo or PayPal. If you have any cash back earnings in your account on November 14, 2023, it will be converted to Raise Cash. This Raise Cash can be used towards any future purchase on the new Raise app only. You will not be able to withdraw any earnings to Venmo or PayPal henceforth.By continuing to use our Services on or after the last updated date on Terms and Conditions, you agree to our updated terms. These documents will be available to you anytime through https://www.raise.com/earn/
terms. Feel free to contact our Raise Support Team at [email protected] for more information.
The original post follows.
Don’t worry Blackhawk Network, you’re not the only one having an identity crisis. Raise has announced today that Slide will be rebranded as Raise.
In case you’re not familiar with what came before, Raise has been around for a number of years as a platform through which you can resell gift cards and/or buy discounted gift cards. They also have an app that provided the same functionality. Several years ago, they also introduced Cash Back gift cards. These were cards that weren’t discounted, but for which they offered a fixed cashback rate on specific denominations in the form of Raise Cash. Raise Cash could then be redeemed by buying gift cards on Raise, keeping the cashback you earned within their ecosystem.
Then came Slide. Slide was an app created by Raise which, at its launch, offered 4% cashback on all gift cards sold in the app. For the most part, that wasn’t very interesting seeing as many of those brands could be bought at a larger discount on Raise. However, the app evolved which made it far more interesting.
First, they offered 1% bonus cashback when prefunding your account. Second, they started offering cashback through shopping portals, with rates sometimes being incredibly generous. At times new customers could get 20% cashback via a portal on their first purchase in addition to the 4%-5% from Slide, while existing users could earn up to 7% cashback in addition to the 4%-5% directly from Slide. Those were amazing days while it lasted.
Sadly it didn’t last for long. Raise decided to stop their affiliate programs which meant you could no longer earn cashback via portals on purchases from Raise or Slide. Slide also changed the entire setup of the app; rather than offering 4% cashback as standard, the cashback rates would vary depending on the brand. This kinda made sense from a business perspective because it was presumably costing them a lot of money on high value brands like eBay and Uber, but it meant Slide was now effectively doing the exact same thing as Raise.
Raise has now decided that what with them being in the business of selling gift cards and having their own app that sells gift cards, setting up a separate app that sells gift cards called Slide perhaps wasn’t such a great idea after all when they could just call that app Raise which is already one that they have up and running.
There’s no timeline provided for this change yet, although the email from Slide-soon-to-be-Raise says that we should keep an eye on our inbox for all of the exciting updates that are coming soon. Those exciting updates will likely be that the Raise app will sell gift cards. Which they do already. Which is exciting. And different. Because they say it is. Maybe the updates will have the app be an exciting new color scheme. I for one can’t wait and have purchased many tenterhooks for me to be on until the much-awaited announcement.
While we’re on the subject of Raise changes, another “exciting” update was that they were meant to be launching a debit card at some point. It now looks like they might’ve changed their mind about that (because it wasn’t a great idea) as Ali noticed that the page that used to have very limited information about the debit card has now been taken down.
To be fair to Raise though, they didn’t spend $44 billion and have it now be worth $19 billion, so there is that.
Raise didn’t build Slide. It was a competitor they swallowed afaik
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160624/BLOGS11/160629888/raise-acquires-new-york-based-slide-app
Interesting, I hadn’t known that part of its history. The whole article is paywalled, but it does say that Slide was a mobile wallet for gift cards, so I think Raise were the ones who added the functionality to buy gift cards too.
Raise Marketplace snapped up a small competitor, leapfrogging ahead on its technology road map.
Raise, an online market for buying and selling gift cards, bought New York-based Slide. Terms were not disclosed, except that Raise used stock instead of cash. It preserves some of the $56 million in venture capital that Raise pulled in last summer and underscores why it’s one of Chicago’s most closely watched tech companies.
Slide is a mobile wallet for gift cards. The two-year-old company, founded by some American Express veterans, has eight employees who will join Raise, which will open a New York office.
The deal is about talent and technology. Raise had been planning to build a digital wallet and other features into its mobile app.
“We’ll most likely integrate what they’ve done with our app,” said CEO George Bousis. “We’re going to incorporate things on their road map, such as chat and push notifications from retailers. Outreach to the customer is something we were going to build, but they were already doing it.”
What Raise has is size. It has partnerships with 70 retailers and about 2 million users, compared with Slide’s 100,000. Long term Raise envisions being more than just an online market for gift cards, becoming a digital shopping platform that connects retailers and consumers.
The deal is reminiscent of Braintree’s acquisition of New York-based Venmo, which had built a platform for consumers to exchange money using mobile phones.
“We had the liquidity and balance sheet and the team,” Bousis said.
It’s the second acquisition made by Raise, which also bought Tastebud, a Chicago startup formerly called StyleSeek.
Raise, which has about 350 employees in Chicago, also will benefit from having a presence in New York.
“It’s important in payments and FinTech,” Bousis said. “The New York tech ecosystem is much more similar to Chicago than the West Coast.”
Slide, which had raised about a $2 million in angel funding, was looking to raise a Series A round when the two companies began talking. “We met them at a conference,” Bousis said. “Originally we were thinking about a partnership, but the more we looked at it, the more (a transaction) made sense.”
Thank you!
you can use archive.net and view any paywalled article FYI
https://archive.ph/
Don’t forget, that’s $19B based on an internal valuation of stock options given to employees (meaning “this is what we believe we are worth”, not what the actual stock would fetch on the open market.