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Venu

Venu is a customer loyalty and marketing platform for hospitality and retail that turns anonymous payments into identifiable, repeat customers.

Category
Fintech
Fund
NZVC I
Website
venuhq.com

What Venu does

Venu's white-label loyalty app runs directly on Android payment terminals, linking payment card tokens to consented customer profiles so offline brands can build a first-party database and target digital advertising the way online businesses do. Over time it learns each member's tastes and offers personalized promotions and recommendations.

The secret

The payment terminal is both the signup channel and the data source. Because the card token identifies a returning customer, a venue builds a first-party database out of transactions it was already taking, without asking anyone to fill in a form.

Why NZVC invested in Venu

NZVC invested in Venu from NZVC Fund I. We file the company under Fintech on the portfolio wall.

We invested in Venu because offline hospitality and retail spend is largely anonymous, which leaves those businesses unable to market with the precision online brands take for granted, and that is a large, underserved gap. Venu solves it at the payment terminal itself, using the checkout as both the sign-up channel and the data source, which is a clever wedge into a hard problem. The founders bring deep hospitality and point-of-sale experience, and their partnerships with the makers of most of the world's payment terminals give them a strong route to scale.

Venu in the press

Upstock · All companies · Vessev