Checkmate, a personalized smart shopping tool that makes it easy for users to discover brands, apply savings and manage their orders post-purchase, announced it has secured a $5 million seed funding round led by Fuel Capital.
Checkmate will use the new investment “to accelerate its product development and customer growth.” Other participants in the investment round “include Kevin Johnson, former CEO of Ebates at Rakuten; f7 Ventures; Blackbird Ventures; Scribble Ventures; Hyper; and Susa Ventures.”
Consumers typically are so “inundated with personalized email deals from brands that it’s tough to manage them all and remember to apply each deal at checkout.” Available as both a mobile app/extension and laptop extension, Checkmate is “the first solution that gathers all the best deals from a user’s personal email and the web and automatically applies them at checkout to help smart shoppers save the most they can.”
Harry Dixon, CEO and Co-founder of Checkmate, said:
“With record-high inflation, economic uncertainty and a volatile stock market, consumers are looking to save wherever they can. At the same time, skyrocketing digital ad costs mean retailers and brands need new ways to establish and build their own customer relationships. We’re extremely proud to partner with this prestigious group of investors as we roll out a delightful product that helps smart shoppers save, while helping brands drive conversion and loyalty.”
For brands, Checkmate functions as “a powerful conversion engine that also helps businesses attract targeted audiences and build long-term relationships with their customers.” In a testing phase, users engaged “with Checkmate 3.5 times per week and saved more than 27%, on average, when purchasing, versus roughly 15% with traditional savings apps.”
Chris Howard, Founding Partner at Fuel Capital, remarked:
“In the face of continually rising customer acquisition costs, most DTC companies have invested in personalized marketing to deepen their relationships with existing customers and discover new ones. Checkmate is a tool purpose built to respond to current market dynamics and provide significant value to brands. We’re highly confident in the Checkmate team and are excited to support the company as it continues to provide significant value to brands and marketing teams.”
Other participants in the funding round “include Liquid 2 Ventures (founded by NFL Hall of Famer Joe Montana), Wischoff Ventures, Exits Capital, Night Capital, Ancestry CEO Deborah Liu, Firstbase CEO Chris Herd and XMTP Co-Founder and President Shane Mac.”
Checkmate’s convenient dashboard also “stores and manages users’ gift cards and tracks all their orders, so they can see exactly when their packages will arrive at their doorstep.”
In addition, users can “opt to have Checkmate generate a ‘ghost email inbox’ with just one click.”
Checkmate will then “create a new email address on the back end and sign it up to the top 100 retail and brand mailing lists, so users can collect thousands of personalized deals without having their own inbox filled with offers.”
Checkmate then automatically “applies any relevant deals from the inbox for users while they shop to ensure they save the most they can, with no extra effort on their part.”