Runa (formerly WeGift) Launches to Empower Individuals and Businesses to Unlock Digital Value

Runa, formerly known as WeGift, today announced its launch as a digital value infrastructure that enables individuals and businesses to pay and get paid by anyone, anywhere, instantly. Runa’s first-of-its-kind payment rail unlocks all forms of digital value – from fractional shares and gift cards to cryptocurrencies and NFTs – seamlessly facilitating B2C payouts and C2B payments regardless of the asset category being used. Runa’s infrastructure facilitates instant B2C global payouts free of charge for the sender and the recipient.

The digital currency and digital payment markets are expected to become a multi-trillion-dollar industry within the next decade, but they remain largely siloed and are not integrated within legacy payment systems. Sending, receiving, and holding digital value has become routine, with individuals now sitting on billions of dollars in the form of gift cards, airline miles, rewards points, and more. While this digital value can be stored easily, it cannot be readily exchanged as desired: businesses often do not accept it so individuals struggle to spend it. By boosting the liquidity of digital assets, Runa creates a win-win outcome for businesses and consumers alike. Businesses can adapt to an increasingly mainstream part of the economy, such as utilizing digital value for mass payouts, while consumers can spend the value they have received just as they would like, purchasing the products they want, when they want them.

“Today, it would be unimaginable for any business not to accept credit card payments,” said Aron Alexander, CEO and Founder, Runa. “Soon, it will be just as unimaginable for the same business not to issue or accept any form of digital value. With Runa’s infrastructure in place, there is no need for one of these payment methods to be more complex than the other. I am excited to witness the impact Runa will have as a means of transforming the way people use, exchange, and create digital value.”

Since its foundation in 2016, Runa has already helped users unlock and spend over $1.1B worth of digital value in the form of gift cards, sending over 22.5M gift cards across 30 countries and 18 currencies, through partnerships with over 1,300 businesses. The closed-loop prepaid and stored value ecosystem used for gift card processing is a proven example of how new forms of digital assets can be used for payments at the Point-Of-Sale or online, a model that can be replicated with other forms of digital assets.

Now, Runa’s platform is broadening its capabilities to form one all-encompassing digital payment network for all categories of digital assets that will include all of the company’s existing functionalities. The Runa infrastructure can integrate all forms of digital assets, including prepaid and branded currency, cryptocurrencies, web3 tokenized assets (NFTs), air miles, stocks, subscriptions, and more. These digital asset categories are currently underserved by the payments industry, and Runa complements established bank and credit card networks to create a comprehensive payments infrastructure capable of transferring value rapidly and at scale.

“Legacy payment systems are struggling to keep pace with the rapid digitization of the economy, and lack the necessary flexibility to transfer diverse assets outside of traditional card networks,” continued Alexander. “By pioneering a first-of-its-kind payment rail, Runa will make it significantly easier to unlock all forms of digital value, making them accessible across a wide range of merchant networks.”