Israeli startup Rise.ai partners with Google to help businesses offer digital gift cards

Google has selected Rise.ai, which offers AI-driven customer re-engagement solutions, to help businesses offer digital gift cards through public listings on Google My Business (GMB), the company announced on Monday. The partnership hopes to help small and medium businesses survive after the fallout of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Rise.ai’s integration with Google will allow businesses to add a ‘Buy Gift Card’ link on their Google business page, expected to appear each time the customer looks at participating businesses on Google’s search engine.

According to a survey conducted by the Connected Commerce Council, in cooperation with Google, small businesses that had an existing e-commerce presence were twice as likely (31% vs. 15%) to have paused operations during the Covid-19 crisis and the subsequent lockdowns across the world. However, small businesses that adopted e-commerce solutions before the crisis were 5.5 times more likely (11% vs. 2%) to increase their revenue in 2020 vs. 2019.

“Since Covid-19 started to affect the market, we see tremendous need for advanced digital gift cards and store credit solutions like the one we are offering on Google My Business platforms,” said Yair Miron, CEO and founder of Rise.ai. “The fact that Rise.ai was selected by Google as a partner for offering digital gift cards is one the strongest votes of confidence that our solution can get, and will allow us to help an unprecedented number of small and medium businesses.”

Currently, digital gift cards through the Rise.ai-Google partnership are available in the U.S., Mexico, Hong Kong, the UK, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand.

It follows a June deal, where the Israeli company was selected to integrate its gift card solution on Facebook and Instagram platforms. Established in 2015, Rise.ai has raised approximately $457,000 pre-seed.