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Rain acquires Ansa to expand branded prepaid wallet payments
The deal adds fiat-based prepaid wallet software, with Rain planning to pair loaded balances with its Visa and Mastercard issuing so they can be used beyond the original merchant.
Rain has acquired Ansa, a startup that provides branded prepaid wallet software for merchants, as the stablecoin card issuer looks to expand its payments platform with products built on dollar balances, The Defiant reports. Ansa's wallets let customers load advance dollar balances and spend at the brand that issued the wallet. Neither Ansa nor Rain described a stablecoin component in the technology Rain purchased. Rain said it intends to pair those prefunded balances with its Visa and Mastercard issuing, enabling spending outside the merchant that originally sold the wallet, and to run wallets, rewards and stablecoins off one platform.
Ansa was founded in 2022 by Sophia Goldberg, who previously worked at Adyen, and JT Cho, formerly an engineer at Affirm. Goldberg has become Rain's head of payments, and The Defiant reports that the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The Defiant says Ansa sold its infrastructure as white-label APIs and mobile SDKs, plus an incentive engine that ties rewards expiration dates to drive repeat behavior. Ansa cited case-study results showing Compass Coffee reported a 30% increase in visits after customers adopted the wallet. Rain also described a Mastercard arrangement that allows in-store spending of a stored balance over Mastercard rails at existing terminals, while online and in-app transactions authorize against Ansa's API, though neither Rain nor Ansa published detailed mechanics and Mastercard has not described the arrangement publicly.
Latest closeCoffee $335.20 ▼0.1%