Berlin-based Social Commerce provider Bonusbox has closed its initial round of funding under the lead of pan-European venture capital firm Wellington Partners; additional parties were Grey Corp, a Munich-based investor, and well-known Business Angels from within the e-commerce and Social Gaming communities. In just one year, Bonusbox, which was founded in the spring of 2011, managed to build the largest shopping rewards and loyalty network on Facebook for the German market. More than 100 online vendors are already benefitting from the advantages of establishing customer loyalty and bonus programs on Facebook by means of a software-as-a-service solution. This new round of funding enables Bonusbox to broaden its competitive edge, while simultaneously driving internationalization from its two offices in Berlin and Sao Paulo.

Bonusbox CEO Paul Gebhardt explains: "Bonusbox offers online merchants an ideal platform for using Facebook as a cost-effective online marketing channel, enabling them to tap into the full virtual potential of this social network's more than one billion members. With the aid of our Facebook App, e-commerce retailers can launch their own bonus programs and significantly boost customer loyalty by creating a more individualized experience. Moreover, we offer dealers an efficient way to win new customers through our shop network. This new round of funding will now allow us to further expand our easy-to-implement software solution and roll it out even faster across international borders."

With its early investment in Bonusbox, Wellington Partners is further broadening its engagement in the field of social media commercialization. The firm’s portfolio includes social music service Spotify as well as photo sharing platform EyeEm and socially-powered local search and discovery service Qype. Wellington General Partner Daniel Waterhouse notes: "We are poised at the threshold of a fundamental change in the way people shop on the Internet: Consumers will increasingly discover and make retail choices based on the signals they receive from their social graph. Bonusbox is very well aligned for the Social Commerce age and has an opportunity to establish itself as hub for shopping on Facebook and beyond."

About Wellington Partners

Wellington Partners is one of the most successful pan-European venture capital firms, with some € 800 million under management and offices in London, Munich, Palo Alto and Zurich. The firm invests in companies throughout Europe that have the potential to become global leaders, in the areas of Digital Media, Resource Efficiency, Software and Life Sciences.

Since 1998, Wellington Partners has invested in more than 100 European companies, including now publicly traded Actelion and XING and privately held companies like Adconion, Alando (acquired by eBay), Ciao (acquired by Microsoft), Enecsys, Glo, Qype and Spotify. For more information please visit www.wellington-partners.com.