Update, Tuesday morning: Tango Card has officially confirmed the funding. Story updated with comments from CEO David Leeds and more details.
Tango Card has raised $35 million, adding fuel to super charge growth of the Seattle startup’s digital rewards platform.
The investment from FTV Capital brings the eight-year-old company close to $55 million raised in its lifetime. The company last raised money about a year ago, when it brought in a $10 million debt round. The latest investment was initially disclosed Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as first reported by GeekWire.
Tango Card aims to make it easier for companies to provide digital rewards, whether it be a gift card to a well-performing employee, an incentive for signing up for a service or a nonprofit donation in a partner’s name. Businesses spend billions annually around the world on these types of rewards, and Tango Card’s mission is to bring more technology to that industry.
Tango Card’s platform consists of three main ways to deliver rewards. Its “rewards as a service” API allows companies to integrate digital rewards directly into their apps and platforms. Blast Rewards allow users to fund a gift card account, build an email template and send out digital gift cards. Reward Link lets the customer send out a link for the recipient to pick a gift card or donation of his or her choice.
Tango Card CEO David Leeds told GeekWire in an interview the company will reinvest the money in its enterprise platform and use it to build out new offerings and expand others. Until recently, the company has focused solely on big businesses, but it has added new program called Rewards Genius for smaller customers. It is a simple portal that makes it easy to send out rewards.
“It’s primarily where smaller customers can really leverage everything that we have historically only done via an API, so they can send rewards and incentives in a very configurable, customizable way,” Leeds said of the new tool.
Tango Card will also use the money to grow its headcount and embark on international expansion. Today, Tango Card employs 87 people through its headquarters in the West Seattle neighborhood and an engineering office in Boise, Idaho. By the end of the year, Leeds expects the company to grow to more than 100 people.
Chris Winship, a partner at FTV Capital who will join Tango Card’s board, said in a statement that enterprise rewards and incentives represents a $100 billion market. Incentive programs have been a lot of manual work and hard to track, and that’s something that Tango Card is trying to improve.
Winship said FTV was interested in Tango Card because it recognized this change and has been at the forefront.
“Tango Card provides an industry-leading solution that capitalizes on this shift to digital, enabling its enterprise clients to efficiently use rewards and incentives for numerous use cases and to achieve business goals such as driving employee engagement and retention, improving employee culture and wellness, and incentivizing customer activities.”
Tango Card, which ranks 71st on the GeekWire 200 index of privately held Pacific Northwest tech startups, says it has more than 2,000 enterprise customers. It partners with more than 200 retailers, such as Amazon and Best Buy, in addition to restaurants, movie theaters and others. Tango Card also supports donations to 30 nonprofits, such as Habitat for Humanity, American Cancer Society and Girls Who Code.
