FreeMonee
FreeMonee was a San Mateo-based platform, founded in 2009, that enabled merchants to offer cash gifts to consumers to motivate store visits. The company raised roughly $45M across 2011-2012; its domain now appears listed for sale on HugeDomains, indicating the operating business is no longer active.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2009
- HeadquartersSan Mateo, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What FreeMonee does
FreeMonee was a San Mateo, California-based company founded in 2009 that operated a platform enabling merchants to deliver cash gifts and financial incentives to consumers as a mechanism to drive store visits and purchases. The company sat at the intersection of payments, merchant marketing, and consumer rewards, positioning itself to leverage consumer banking and rewards infrastructure to deliver merchant-funded cash gifts. The firm employed between 11 and 50 people at its peak and was backed by a syndicate of venture capital firms including Opus Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Redpoint, Sutter Hill Ventures, and The Contrarian Group.
FreeMonee raised approximately $45 million in aggregate venture funding across two disclosed rounds: $11 million in May 2011 and $34 million in August 2012. The scale of the 2012 round relative to the company's likely stage suggests an ambitious consumer/fintech platform build, though no subsequent funding events are recorded in the available data. Only one named executive is documented — Andy Laursen, VP of Development — which is a notably thin leadership footprint relative to the capital deployed and headcount range, suggesting either attrition, limited public disclosure, or post-shutdown state.
The company's current operating status is unclear, but the available evidence points strongly toward wind-down or abandonment. The primary web asset, FreeMonee.com, is listed for sale on the HugeDomains marketplace for a one-time price of $795 (or $33.13/month over a 24-month, 0% interest payment plan). No operating website, no customer logos, no active product offerings, no partnerships, and no recent corporate communications are documented. This combination of signals — lapsed domain, absence of operating indicators, and no post-2012 funding — implies the business entity is no longer commercially active, and the domain name has re-entered the aftermarket as a generic asset.
FreeMonee firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- FreeMonee
- Website
- https://freemonee.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2009
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- FreeMonee was a San Mateo-based platform, founded in 2009, that enabled merchants to offer cash gifts to consumers to motivate store visits. The company raised roughly $45M across 2011-2012; its domain now appears listed for sale on HugeDomains, indicating the operating business is no longer active.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
FreeMonee industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Promotional Marketing Platform
- akta.pro primary industry
- Rewards, Recognition & Merchandise Sourcing (Points, Catalogs, Gift Cards) (THAHANAC)
Keywords
Where FreeMonee is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Mateo
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
FreeMonee business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Personnel, Operations
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| One time/ perpetual license | Pay-as-you-go | One-time domain purchase |
| Other | Monthly | Payment plan option |
Distribution channels1 record
FreeMonee product offering
Product offeringCore offering
FreeMonee provided a platform that enabled merchants to offer cash gifts to customers as a marketing mechanism to motivate visits to their stores. The platform bridged merchant promotional budgets with consumer cash incentives, converting those incentives into measurable store-visit activity.
Product overview
FreeMonee.com is a domain name listed for sale on the HugeDomains marketplace. The primary offering is the domain freeMonee.com — a 9-character domain name combining the keywords 'Free' and 'Monee'. No additional products, services, or brand offerings exist for FreeMonee as this is a domain-parking page. The domain is available for immediate purchase at $795 or via a 0% interest payment plan over 24 months.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Merchant Cash-Gift Promotional Platform Platform that enables merchants to offer cash gifts to consumers to motivate visits to their stores, converting promotional spend into measured store-visit activity.
Companies that use FreeMonee
Customer profileIdeal customer profiles1 record
FreeMonee technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
FreeMonee partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators1 record
Recent moves3 records
Expansion highlights1 record
FreeMonee competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Honey Science (PayPal): Honey is a broader digital rewards and cashback browser platform owned by PayPal, offering consumers savings across thousands of merchants. It competes in the same merchant-funded consumer rewards category as FreeMonee but at significantly greater scale.
- Groupon: Groupon is a broad merchant-deals marketplace offering discounted offers to drive consumer purchases and store visits. While broader in scope, its merchant-funded local-deals model overlaps with FreeMonee's incentive-driven store-traffic concept.
- Coupons.com (Quotient Technology / Neptune Retail Solutions): Coupons.com is a long-standing digital coupon and cash-back savings platform that distributes merchant-funded offers to consumers. It shares FreeMonee's underlying logic of using merchant-funded incentives to drive purchase behavior.
Direct peers
- Shopkick: Shopkick rewards consumers with digital gift cards and offers for in-store visits and purchases, using a merchant-funded rewards model similar to FreeMonee's cash-gift-driven store-visit mechanic.
- Ibotta: Ibotta is a leading cash-back rewards app that lets consumers earn cash gifts on everyday purchases at merchants. It directly competes with FreeMonee's merchant-funded cash-rewards concept via a mobile-first delivery mechanism.
- RetailMeNot: RetailMeNot aggregates digital coupons, deals, and cash-back offers from merchants to drive store traffic and online sales. Its merchant-funded incentive model is a close analog to FreeMonee's value proposition.
- Plink: Plink operated a card-linked loyalty platform that gave consumers cash-back rewards funded by merchants, much like FreeMonee. It was one of FreeMonee's most direct early competitors before being acquired by LoyaltyOne.
- Cardlytics: Cardlytics operates a bank-funded offers platform that delivers cash-back rewards to consumers based on their debit/credit card transactions. Like FreeMonee, it links merchant-funded incentives to actual consumer spend and drives store visits — the closest direct comparable in the card-linked rewards space.
- Rakuten (formerly Ebates): Rakuten is one of the largest cash-back and rewards marketplaces, paying consumers cash rewards funded by merchants for online and in-store purchases. It overlaps directly with FreeMonee's merchant-funded cash gift model.
Emerging players
- Yelp Connect: Yelp's merchant offerings (Check-In Offers, Yelp Deals) provide merchants with consumer-incentive tools to drive store visits. While Yelp is primarily a discovery platform, its merchant offers business has functional overlap with FreeMonee's store-visit motivation model.
Market position
Strengths2 records
Weaknesses3 records
Competitive moat2 records
Key highlights3 records
Customer concentration
FreeMonee social profiles
Digital presenceFreeMonee financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
FreeMonee leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
FreeMonee funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds2 records
Investors5 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
FreeMonee M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about FreeMonee
What does FreeMonee do?
FreeMonee provided a platform that enabled merchants to offer cash gifts to customers as a marketing mechanism to motivate visits to their stores. The platform bridged merchant promotional budgets with consumer cash incentives, converting those incentives into measurable store-visit activity.
When was FreeMonee founded?
FreeMonee was founded in 2009. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is FreeMonee based?
FreeMonee is headquartered in San Mateo, United States, in the North America region.
Who are FreeMonee's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Honey Science (PayPal), Groupon and Coupons.com (Quotient Technology / Neptune Retail Solutions). Direct peers are Shopkick, Ibotta, RetailMeNot, Plink, Cardlytics and Rakuten (formerly Ebates). Yelp Connect is listed as an emerging player.
Does FreeMonee have an API?
No public API is recorded for FreeMonee.
What industry is FreeMonee in?
FreeMonee's product category is Promotional Marketing Platform. Its primary akta.pro industry code is THAHANAC, Rewards, Recognition & Merchandise Sourcing (Points, Catalogs, Gift Cards).