France’s Joko FinTech Gets €1.6M To Help Consumers Earn Credit Card Rewards

French startup Joko announced that it has raised €1.6 million from investors including Partech, Axeleo Capital, Lafayette Plug and Play and others to further develop its loyalty program integrated into credit or debit cards.

Founded in 2018, Joko’s loyalty program already works with dozens of major retailers including McDonald’s, Uber, Starbucks, Zara and more. It is now being accelerated within Facebook’s Startup Garage at Station F, which focuses on personal data protection and privacy. The funds raised will allow the company to hire more developers and data scientists.

“Our ambition with Joko is to build a strong brand, a product used by millions of people that retailers reward on a daily basis, by putting technology at the service of the user experience,” said Xavier Starkloff, Joko CEO and co-founder, according to EU-Startups.

Through Joko’s mobile app, credit cards become loyalty cards, so there is no need to scan or say anything. Instead, the user is notified after their purchase and can check their points in the app, trading them for gift cards to several retailers or converting them into charitable donations.

“Our users are looking for a reward — and loyalty experience that is simple, customized and gamified, and that is what we have managed to create with Joko,” added Nicolas Salat-Baroux, co-founder of Joko. “It is thanks to this experience that we see a real impact on the frequency of purchases and the average basket of our users at the retailers available on the application. For example, with Monoprix, we have seen a 17% increase in expenses.”

After a few months of beta, Joko has already been adopted by tens of thousands of people, with the user base doubling every month.

“As soon as Joko arrived in our 5th acceleration batch, we were immediately seduced by their vision and ability to execute,” said Pieter Lammens, director of Lafayette Plug and Play. “Today, as an investor, we are convinced that the Joko solution will have a major impact in the medium term for retailers in the recruitment and entertainment of millennials.”

And last year, Joko registered as a payment institution agent with the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR), and it is the first mobile app in Europe to use the PSD2 to revolutionize loyalty cards, with plans to expand internationally by 2020.