Less than one year after its launch, Baton Rouge tech startup I Hate Receipts has raised half of the $1.5 million it is targeting in its seed round of funding, and has signed a deal with online retail platform Shopify, which will expose potentially millions of users to the company’s app.
The IHR app eliminates the need to handle or save paper receipts and is growing rapidly in the era of COVID-19, where contactless transactions are increasingly the norm.
Since last November, the company has been averaging about 35% month-over-month growth and currently has about 7,200 users of both the free and paid versions of the app, company founder Ryan Greene says.
|
|
|
“What has really been the game changer for us since last year is this contactless world,” Greene says.
The app, which Greene describes as a Venmo for receipts, enables users to snap pictures of their paper receipts and store them in a secure, cloud-based vault, where the receipts can be accessed, tagged and categorized.
The data can be used to help consumers better understand their purchase history, manage their spending, and share information with others.
It can also be used by retailers, who send customers targeted deals based on their purchases, though customer information remains encrypted and, therefore, private.
Though the startup is still small, Greene and his partners expect growth to potentially explode in the near future. Later this fall, IHR will be fully integrated with Shopify, an e-commerce platform that processes nearly 10% of all online retail transactions for mostly small and medium-sized businesses.
Users making a purchase on Shopify will see an icon at the close of the transaction that will give them an option to download the IHR app and go paperless with their receipts.
“We’re really not sure what to expect and how big it could get,” Greene says. “We could have 7,000 new users in a month or 70,000.”
In the first quarter of 2022, IHR will also be integrated with Pax Payment terminals, a payment software system used by such retail giants as Home Depot, Best Buy, and Chick-Fil-A, that will expose more users to the app.
The company’s partnerships with Shopify and Pax so impressed the judges at a pitch competition in Austin earlier this month, IHR beat out 50 other startups to win the contest.
Though the award didn’t include any prize money, the company got a lot of exposure to the 300 or so VC and institutional investors in the audience.
|
|
|
In the days since, IHR has had 10 subsequent meetings with potential investors.
‘We are proud of our growth and see a big future,” Greene says.
This story originally appeared in a Sept. 28 edition of Daily Report. To keep up with Baton Rouge business and politics, subscribe to the free Daily Report e-newsletter here.