A Portland fintech startup has inked a major partnership that could get its platform in front of major national brands.
Bumped's agreement with loyalty program management company Maritz Motivation looks to get the local company's product and technology powering loyalty programs to many new places, said founder and CEO David Nelsen. That in turn could feed Nelsen’s vision to “democratize investing” by helping more people dip their toe into the market and learn about holding stocks.
St. Louis-based Maritz Motivation is part of Maritz Holdings Inc., a 128-year-old business travel and incentives company. Maritz Motivation handles the loyalty rewards and incentive programs for Fortune 500 companies.
Bumped’s platform allows consumers to receive fractional shares of public company stock as part of loyalty and incentive programs.
Initially, Bumped planned to build its own brokerage ecosystem with a branded app, and allow customer companies to join the Bumped platform. As the company rolled out its product, it tested a hypothesis that turned out to be wrong.
“We have always wanted to be a platform. What has been hard is what does the product need to look like for the brands to use it,” said Nelsen. “Version one was the wrong start. Brands didn’t want to be part of another platform. Everyone wants their own closed loop and branding.”
“It’s hard when you are creating a new category,” he added. “It’s a bit more known in existing categories and you know how it operates. When it’s new there is no playbook; you are trying to figure out the appropriate playbook that results in winning deal flow.”
Partnering with Maritz Motivation is a bit of a homecoming for Nelsen, as a Maritz Motivation partnership was a turning point for his last company, the digital gift card business Giftango.
“(With Giftango), partnering with Maritz Motivation was a statement to the ecosystem that we are a market category leader. We got that and won the rest of the ecosystem,” Nelsen recalls. “Right now, with what we are doing we could have started here. I was too close so near the ecosystem I didn’t do what I did last time.”
Cindy Willis, senior rewards product manager at Maritz, said the decision to partner with Bumped was a no-brainer.
“Both being first-to-market in our respective industries, we understand what it means to disrupt a space and deliver a product that drives change," she said.
Nelsen’s channel strategy for Bumped includes the recently announced partnership with TAB Bank.
