Wix adds gift cards to eCommerce store

Wix, a leading digital creative SaaS platform, acquired Rise.ai, an Israeli gift card startup, for an unknown sum. Wix is looking to continue its online dominance as a big winner of the digital transition age, now extending the Wix eCommerce platform with the Rise.ai customer re-engagement solution. "Customer retention has become the top priority for eCommerce brands worldwide, as acquisition costs continue to spike," said Yair Miron, founder and CEO of Rise.ai.

Rise.ai develops gift card and store credit solutions, designed to manage the entire re-engagement cycle with gift cards, loyalty cards, rewards, and refunds. "Since our founding, we have powered tens of thousands of leading brands with loyalty and re-engagement solutions to grow their businesses. We are now thrilled to join Wix and bring Rise.ai to hundreds of thousands of online stores around the globe and help them rise." While the Wix eCommerce platform includes online stores, service providers, restaurants, events and many more. It provides merchants with a full solution to create, manage and grow their eCommerce business to sell online and in person. Making this pairing all the more ideal for further growth of the NASDAQ traded Wix.

The acquisition of Rise will equip Wix eCommerce merchants with accessible re-engagement tools to better manage, and improve brand marketing efforts. These tools will significantly help them grow long-term customer value by increasing customer retention through loyalty programs. “By providing merchants with more native tools, we can help them grow long-term customer value and revenues to build their businesses and keep optimizing and increasing profitability. Rise.ai is considered to be the best solution of its kind in the market, and the integration will enable merchants to easily manage and maintain customer engagement tools, ultimately leading to increased loyalty and revenue,” said Arik Perez, Head of Wix eCommerce.

Trigo powers Germans' checkout-free shopping

Trigo is an Israeli startup using computer vision technologies to create the first agnostic frictionless checkout technology, unlike the limited Amazon Go experience. Almost a year ago we reported that Trigo had entered into agreement with a major European supermarket to embark on a frictionless pilot, and recently the name of the now known German chain has been revealed.

Trigo is partnering with REWE Group, one of Germany’s biggest food retailers, to implement frictionless, or as the company puts it “grab-and-go”, shopping. The initial launch will take place in downtown Cologne, where during the first phase, REWE employees and loyalty card shoppers will be able to walk into the shop, select their items, and simply walk out - without having to queue at the checkout lane or scan any items. Trigo’s system will compile the selected items into a virtual shopping list and settle payments and receipts digitally on a mobile application. The specific downtown store, where Trigo is working its magic, is scheduled to be open to the wider public in the summer.

The announcement follows Trigo’s ongoing work with Tesco PLC, the largest grocery retailer in the UK, and Shufersal, Israel’s largest supermarket chain, who are looking to provide their customers a frictionless experience. “Trigo is immensely proud and honored to be rolling out its frictionless grocery shopping technology with REWE, one of Europe’s biggest and most innovative grocery retailers. REWE have placed their trust in Trigo’s privacy-by-design architecture, and we look forward to bringing this exciting technology to German grocery shoppers," said Michael Gabay, CEO and co-founder at Trigo, which recently raised $60 million Series B funding to help forward their continental expansion.

Germany has some of the toughest data protection and workers’ rights legislation in the world, and has tapped Trigo’s privacy-by-design, GDPR compliant architecture to implement its first frictionless checkout system. Trigo's technology does not use facial recognition, nor does it capture biometric data or hold any direct identifiers of customers. The system recognizes shoppers’ movement while they’re in the store but does not know who they are at any stage. Notices on the store’s doors will inform shoppers about the cameras in the ceilings, including information about how they do not capture any biometric data, and that faces are blurred.

“As a leading provider in this space, Trigo has seen rapid growth and increasing demand for its automated technologies. We are poised to launch new stores on Continental Europe in 2021,” Gabay added.

BUYME taps Well-b to enhance employee experience

Israeli eCommerce giant BUYME and Israeli startup Well-b have partnered to bring a new approach to employee experience for BUYME’s Israeli customers. As part of BUYME’s investment in the company, the partnership will form a new joint company which will leverage Well-b’s machine learning technologies to set, according to the announcement, “a new standard  in the field of organizational happiness management in Israel”.

“We intend to implement the revolution we have led in the Israeli gift sector in everything related to the world of organizational happiness. Gifts are an important part of an employee's organizational happiness journey, and together with well-b we will know how to deepen the value proposition to our customers,” said Tomer Cohen, CEO at BUYME.

The Well-b platform first learns the customer’s business goals, wellness budget, language, corporate culture, then dives deeper to learn what truly motivates the user, and their personal interests. Once the information is collected, the AI engine produces insight into the right infrastructure for organizations’ employee wellbeing programs and processes. From “Happy Hours” to training and personal development tools, Well-b offers enterprises from a variety of well-being activities to improve their employee journey. Under a single dashboard HR and team leaders are informed with employee engagement patterns; continuously learning and improving on recommendations and insight to maximize employee experience.

Yoav Shahaf and Dror Trope, co-founders and CEOs of Well-b, said: "Today it is clearer than ever that employees are the heart of the companies and the most important resource in the organization. Many companies still manage their employee experience in an outdated and inefficient manner, and experience deep frustration at the gap between their large investment on the one hand and the disappointing results on the other - low employee engagement and low retention rates. The well-b technological system will enable our customers to better understand their employees and manage all welfare activities holistically and efficiently. We are excited about the strategic cooperation with BUYME and are confident that the capabilities of both parties will create great and unique value for our customers and a new standard in the local market. "