Rain acquired Ansa, a startup whose software lets merchants run their own branded prepaid wallets, the stablecoin card issuer announced.
The purchase adds a product built on fiat. Ansa's wallets hold dollar balances that customers load in advance and spend at the brand that issued them, and neither company described a stablecoin leg in the technology Rain bought. Rain's plan is to pair those balances with its own Visa and Mastercard issuing so a prefunded balance can spend outside the merchant that sold it, and to run wallets, rewards and stablecoins off one platform.
Ansa was founded in 2022 by Sophia Goldberg, who spent several years at Adyen managing global accounts and product, and JT Cho, previously an engineer at Affirm. It emerged from stealth in April 2023 with $5.4 million led by Bain Capital Ventures, then raised a $14 million Series A led by Renegade Partners in April 2024, for $19.4 million in total disclosed funding. Goldberg becomes Rain's head of payments.
"Every great merchant or consumer brand eventually wants their own version of the Starbucks wallet, but very few have the infrastructure to pull it off," Goldberg said in Rain's announcement.
Ansa sold that infrastructure as white-label APIs and mobile SDKs, plus an incentive engine that attaches expiration dates to rewards to pull customers back sooner. Its named customers include Washington, D.C. coffee chain Compass Coffee and music gear marketplace Reverb. Compass reported a 30% increase in visits from customers who adopted the wallet, according to Ansa's case study.
