E-commerce reward point provider Beenz.com Inc will tomorrow announce it has won $10m in venture funding from Apax Partners & Co Ventures Ltd, the UK venture capital firm, bringing the total raised by the startup to $33.8m this year. The injection follows last month’s third round of funding with a $20m investment from a group of individuals and companies lead by Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison.
Beenz said the Apax investment marks its attempt to secure funding from Europe, where the company has its roots, rather than exclusively from the US. Beenz, founded in London earlier this year, has offices in San Francisco, New York and Sydney, Australia, and is making noises about opening up an Asian office. Recently Beenz has received considerable interest from big name sites such as Excite.com, QXL.com and VNUNet.com, and deals with MP3.com and SpeedyClick.com are expected to be announced shortly.
Beenz.com acts as a bank for beenz, its proprietary currency that works like reward points. Used initially and still primarily as a lure to little-known web sites, beenz are given away either for free or in exchange for personal information, and can be exchanged for goods and services. Merchants can buy the units from Beenz for $0.01 each, and redeem them for $0.005 each.
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