Tapcart, a leading mobile commerce platform that enables Shopify-powered brands to launch mobile apps, announced it has raised Series B funding of $50 million. The round was led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Shopify, SignalFire, Greycroft, Act One Ventures and Amplify LA.

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Consumers in massive numbers are flocking to mobile devices to shop their favorite brands. Tapcart powers many of the App Store’s top shopping apps for brands such as Fashion Nova, Pier One Imports, The Hundreds, Patta, Culture Kings and thousands of other top merchants. Tapcart transacted over $1.2 billion in merchant GMV during the last 12 months, underscoring the key role the platform plays in the world’s digital transformation into mobile retail.

Tapcart’s recurring revenue increased 3x in 2020. Much of that growth, and the company’s expansion, has been driven by macro trends in consumer behavior. Mobile usage continues to soar worldwide, while Americans spent more time on their phones than watching live TV for the first time ever. Already popular mobile usage was greatly fueled by the pandemic, which boosted consumer mobile screen-time up over 20% YoY from 2019. During that same period, mobile commerce spending grew 55% YoY, exceeding $53 billion globally during the online holiday shopping season alone. Over that span, Tapcart merchants received mobile app orders at a rate of more than once-per-second. Tapcart believes these trends are here to stay for the long-term.

Tapcart’s Differentiators

“Tapcart is a true end-to-end sales channel built for marketers. You can engage mobile shoppers, create meaningful marketing promos and send them directly into lightning-fast checkouts. Customers want and expect unique, engaging, and personalized shopping experiences. This is why Tapcart exists,” says Tapcart’s CEO, Eric Netsch.

That’s what he says sets Tapcart apart from other channels. The platform comes complete with a codeless drag-and-drop app builder where merchants can customize their app and host rich content experiences for their customers. While most ecommerce brands rely on paid ads and email in their marketing strategy, the fastest-growing brands are leveraging mobile apps and push notifications to drive massive retention and high CLVs.

Tapcart values its deep relationship with Shopify, having exclusively served its merchants to date. Tapcart is trusted by thousands of fast-growing Shopify merchants, and believes strongly in the mission and future growth of the publicly traded powerhouse. With Shopify’s investment and partnership, Tapcart plans to double-down on the Shopify ecosystem.

“We believe brands must be where their customers are, and today that means being on their phones,” said Satish Kanwar, VP of Product Acceleration at Shopify. “Tapcart helps merchants create mobile-first shopping experiences that customers love, reinforcing Shopify’s mission to make commerce better for everyone. We look forward to seeing Tapcart expand its success on Shopify with the more than 1.7 million merchants on our platform today.”

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What’s next for Tapcart

Tapcart plans to expand its go-to-market strategy, accelerate team growth, and launch innovative new products into the market. The mobile commerce platform will soon be adding key new products like marketing automation, personalization and developer SDKs. Additionally, App Clip support, announced earlier this year, will provide a completely new way for consumers to shop in-app. The new product bypasses the App Store to allow a native shopping experience to be instantly streamed when needed. Mobile app usage will continue to skyrocket as apps become even more seamlessly accessible with App Clips.

“Paid marketing channels have become ferociously competitive for brands, while end consumers have grown numb to incessant promotion emails. Tapcart provides e-commerce marketers the opportunity to engage their most valuable customers by owning a piece of real-estate on their mobile phones — this is further bolstered with push-notification campaigns. This technology has been attempted many times over the past decade. Tapcart is the first business we’ve seen achieve this vision in a reasonably priced, easy-to-use and still robust platform,” says Vinny Pujji, Managing Partner at Left Lane Capital.

Mobile apps significantly increase independent D2C revenue for Shopify stores, and retain customers at significantly higher rates than mobile websites. Features like premium content, app exclusives, personalization and instant load times turn casual shoppers into lucrative brand loyalists. Push notifications remain one of the most powerful marketing channels, proving to increase retention rates up to 88% and reduce cart abandonment rates by up to 30%.