A unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. has raised its investment in a cloud-based customer loyalty platform in Israel.
AppCard, an innovative marketing and loyalty platform for small and medium sized retailers, said it raised $20 million in Series B funding.
Alexander Rittweger, founder of Loyalty Partner, and PLDT Capital, led the funders. The existing investors also participated in the fund-raising activity, namely Peter Thiel of Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt of Innovation Endeavors and and Jerry Yang.
The new funding aims to further develop the technology. “The AppCard platform caught our attention because of its advanced technology and creative business model,” PLDT Capital co-managing director Winston Damarillo said.
“The leadership is a dream team, consisting of successful tech and loyalty entrepreneurs. We’re excited to bring the benefits of AppCard to the PLDT Group, as well as to consumers and merchants in the Philippines and the Southeast Asian region,” he added.
PLDT Capital in October 9 signed a convertible preferred stock purchase agreement with AppCard for $5 million.
Rittweger said AppCard’s advanced technology would help the company build a performance-marketing platform unrivaled in the small and medium-sized business marketplace.
“I’m excited to marry my global loyalty experience with this team’s exceptional digital experience,” he said.
Rittweger founded Payback, the world’s largest coalition loyalty platform with over 70 million active members in Germany, Italy, India, Mexico and Poland, and sold it to American Express.
“We’re fortunate to be able to add strategic investors with deep loyalty and marketing experience,” AppCard co-founder and chief executive Yair Goldfinger said.
“AppCard continues to deliver on its vision to empower retailers to make data driven marketing decisions based on shoppers’ buying behaviors,” he said.
Goldfinger was the co-founder of ICQ, an instant messaging pioneer acquired by AOL, and Dotomi, a personalized online-advertising platform acquired by ValueClick.
AppCard empowers thousands of retailers to market directly to their shoppers in a personalized way. The technology combines smart data capture with artificial intelligence to automate marketing. After developing and optimizing the product to cater to specific retail verticals, AppCard released its latest version in the second half of last year and generated explosive growth.