Rain Acquires Uptop in Push for Stablecoin Loyalty

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Rain Acquire Uptop 🌐 

Rain, a business that issues Visa debit and credit cards using stablecoin payments, has acquired Uptop, an onchain rewards platform who are partnered with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons and LSU Athletics.

The move comes after Rain raised a $56m Series B funding round in August led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Samsung, Galaxy Ventures, DragonFly and others. The firm also raised $24.5m in March 2025.

Rain’s business works like this:

1. They issue you a card that has a stablecoin balance

2. That card is connecting to Visa

3. Whenever the card is swiped or used, Rain checks a user’s stablecoin balance

4. They settle with fiat on the backend whenever you pay

In short, they let apps and companies issue stablecoin spend credit and debit cards, managing the FX, treasury, settlement and upfront KYC for their clients.

Rain’s transaction volumes increased 10x between January 2025 and August 2025, when they announced their Series B raise.

Uptop are an enterprise loyalty business that have found product market fit in the sports industry.

On the acquisition, Farooq Malik, CEO and Co-Founder of Rain said:

"We're building end-to-end, stablecoin-native infrastructure so our clients don't have to stitch it together. By integrating rewards, Rain continues to lead the stablecoin industry as a comprehensive platform that lets partners go live and scale fast, all while keeping the consumer experience simple. With Rain and Uptop, any partner will be able to offer branded cards with built-in rewards, or launch a Starbucks-style wallet and rewards program that drives loyalty."

John Timoney, Co-Founder and CEO of Uptop said:

"We built Uptop so linking a card is all it takes for people to feel closer to the brands and teams they love. As part of Rain, we can bring that simplicity to more cardholders globally, with onchain infrastructure that's invisible to the user."

[Pssst. — Uptop CEO John Timoney was on the Sporting Crypto Podcast a month ago!]

So why has a stablecoin card business acquired Uptop?

We’ll get into that after dissecting their offering.

Success of the Cleveland Cavs Rewards Program 📱 

Uptop’s in-market example is the successful ‘Cavs Rewards’ program.

It is a free-to-join program where fans can earn ‘Cavs points’.

These points can be earned by connecting a debit or credit card of your choice and using that connected card in the following ways:

• In-Store Purchases: Fans can shop at any participating partner location.

• Online Purchases: Fans can shop online at partner websites.

• Select In-Venue Purchases: Purchases made at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (Cavaliers Home Arena). This includes concessions and bars in the arena and Centre Court, the Cavaliers team shop. 

• Specific Products: Fans can earn points by purchasing eligible consumer packaged goods.

Fans can then redeem these points for rewards such as game day tickets, exclusive VIP experiences, team merchandise, memorabilia and digital badges.

The sign-up flow is simple and standalone from the rest of the Cavs ecosystem (for now).

After signing up with an email and creating a ‘Cavs ID’, the onboarding flow for Cavs Rewards is very straightforward and is seamless on a mobile browser.

1. After clicking ‘Get Started’ users are walked through what they need to do to accrue points.

2. Fans are told they need to connect a card to earn points on purchases at Cavs Rewards locations, and they can also earn additional points by scanning receipts showing proof of purchase of eligible products such as Coca-Cola, Michelob Ultra, and more. 

3. Fans are then shown how business owners in the local area can connect with the Cavs Rewards program.

4. Finally, it is outlined how those points can be redeemed and what the rewards could be.

After the onboarding process, users are then prompted to connect a debit or credit card.

This is done easily through the fintech company Plaid, and after linking a card, fans are directed to the home screen.

From there, fans can click on ‘Add Points’ (1), ‘Earn Points’ (2), ‘Rewards’ (3) or (4) ‘Join as a Business’.

• (1) Add Points: Allows fans to purchase points with fiat currency.

• (2) Earn Points: Shows fans the different ways in which they can earn points, such as referrals, purchases and challenges.

• (3) Rewards: Showcases the types of rewards fans can redeem.

• (4) Join as a Business: Rerouted to a landing page from Uptop with a form to be filled out by businesses.

It’s very straightforward and has led to some fantastic results for Uptop and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Here’s the data since their launch:

• 21,000+ members

• $8.5m spent at partners

• > $1m in incremental spend

• 21% sponsor spend lift

• 1600 rewards redeemed

• 4.2m enrolled transactions

• 51% boost in team shop sales from enrolled members

On the Sporting Crypto’s podcast, Timoney said:

"We're seeing double digit, sometimes north of 20% increases in fealty to the brand that is an earning brand. If you're earning points towards your favourite team and they're on either side of the street, which one are you going to go to?"

He went on to say the crux of their strategy is to “make the pie of value bigger for reaching your fans in an owned way", adding that "The Cavs are excited about it. They expect it to be a seven-figure revenue channel."

Not only has this been a commercial success, but a data and marketing one as well.

The Cavaliers' consented user base has grown by 50% through the programme, expanding from approximately 40,000 to 60,000 fans available for direct marketing communications.

Indeed, Timoney told me that "when they [Uptop] shared the metrics of the Cavs program with LSU, it immediately clicked for them that a bunch of the brands that they're already partnered with would have a strong appetite"

Success begets success and show not tell is the way to sell sports.

Analysis 🧠 

Blockchain-enabled loyalty has been a highly contested market, especially in sports.

Two problems have persisted, however:

1. Sports team technology stacks are far behind

2. The onchain payments stack was not mature enough, and loyalty programs make money because of transactions.

But we might be entering a period where those two things are being solved for, which creates a very interesting market for the future of onchain loyalty in sports.

There are three parts of this market:

1. Onchain loyalty programs with linked cards (Uptop)

2. Cards that have loyalty programs themselves, and partner with brands to offer promotions

3. Co-branded cards

The reason why loyalty programs are difficult is that the financial ledgering in the background is much too hard for most sports CFOs. It’s not an insult to them, it’s just the truth.

I spoke to someone last week who built one of the largest loyalty programs on the planet — and she told me that the size of the team that created the models for credit lines was extensive, and there was no way they could have done it themselves.

So you can forget about a team or maybe even a league doing something like this.

So what is the solution?

Uptop obfuscate the payments verticalization by using Plaid, an open banking platform.

It reads my transactions and says, “Yes, you spent 5 times at [insert brand], using your Cavs Rewards connected card”, and the rewards program issues me points. The Cavs have provable spend increase for their partners and sponsors who are already spending a lot of money with them, and the Cavs have also driven direct attributable revenue as a result of the program.

It sounds awesome.

But there are a few missing pieces for both the team and Uptop:

1. The card that is connected is still taking a big piece of the transaction

2. If that card is disconnected, there is no payment mechanism for Uptop

3. Uptop have a less defensible proposition if the payments stack deteriorates or increases in cost

4. The team’s sponsors may have partnerships and exclusivity deals with other payment companies that may interfere with this stack

So Rain acquiring Uptop coming together makes sense for the following reasons:

1. Creating a co-branded card for a team and incentivising the ownership and use of them creates a more defensible verticalised approach for both Uptop and Rain.

2. Uptop is less reliant on open banking feeds and can utilise Rain’s financial backend.

3. Rain can integrate directly with brands that don’t think they need a card or a loyalty program, or don’t yet have one. It broadens their sales funnel, and creates more embedded solutions when they do sell, giving them lower churn, longer deals and increased margins.

4. Rain has a more defensible verticalised approach, as the rest of the market begins to catch up on stablecoin settlement, and stablecoin cards become a highly contested market

It’s crucial to also put this into the context of the broader sports industry.

This might seem complex and read such that every team or league needs to own more of their payments stack, but for many, diversifying revenue is becoming a must.

The sports landscape is shifting drastically and requires a business model rethink.

And payments and loyalty are a big piece of that.

If you think about how important stablecoins are becoming to the payments landscape, and how sports teams are trying to grow their global audiences and increase merchandising and digital revenues, it is no surprise that Rain sees this industry as a strong opportunity.

Concluding thoughts 💭 

(1) Many don’t believe in loyalty programs in sports

A lot of the people I know in the sports industry think that loyalty doesn’t work in this industry.

Which I believe is absolutely untrue. It’s just that the models and propositions we’ve seen have been poor, and CCOs at sports teams think this is something they can ‘sell’ to a sponsor.

(2) Partly because sports industry is scared of canabilization

Part of the fear is that you’re discounting or giving away what you already sell.

That’s an issue for CCOs that is hard to explain to them.

There is an element of “trust me, you’ll net out better here” — but more ‘show not tell’ examples like Cavs Rewards need to emerge.

(3) Most Chief Commercial Officers are still focused on the MVP

And many are trying to sell this idea to people who are thinking about what tickets are going to cost and how they ensure a full house every week.

That is still the most important part of a team’s owned bottom line.

(4) Broadcast is the golden goose

Broadcast is the main moneymaker for most big franchises in sports, but for how long?

(5) But we’ve seen the canary in the coalmine

What we’ve seen in Ligue 1 in France is how quickly the landscape can shift for broadcast, and how hurt some of the biggest teams in the country are as a byproduct.

Many teams across the world in every sport will be resolute in thinking “that will never be us” — but why?

At some point, the bubble has to burst (as shown by Ligue 1) or the growth has to consolidate.

What’s next for the revenue lines for sports teams is fascinating.

(6) Teams need to find a way to make more money

Most executives in sport will tell you sponsorship, digital, direct to fan, and merchandising are the worlds in which they will make more money in the future, compared to revenues from broadcast.

But how do you do that when you have no loyalty program, low tech capabilities and a limited payments stack?

(7) And they are years behind technologically

At the core is technology.

Sports teams are so far behind, for the most part.

So, partnering their way into this decade from a technology perspective is the way to go.

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General ‘Stuff’ that Could Impact You

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