Vela Pulse shipped, brand campaigns agreed across Nestlé - San Pellegrino, Buxton and Nescafé - four live Mastercard-introduced issuer opportunities, and our expansion into health & beauty, opening up the world's largest consumer brands.
H1 has been a busy one - and, for the first time, it feels like the product and commercial proposition are really starting to click.
We agreed terms for several brand campaigns through Nestlé - across San Pellegrino, Buxton and Nescafé. Nestlé will distribute the activation through their 2.5m-consumer first-party CRM ahead of the Q4 launch, which we expect to drive a clear user spike from September. Sapling is live, Carlsberg-Britvic initial T&L is agreed at £20k, and we opened four live Mastercard issuer conversations across the UK and Europe. We also completed the Vela rebrand and launched Pulse, our B2B insights dashboard.
This half we also transitioned to an AI-native development workflow, materially increasing development velocity without increasing headcount. It enabled us to launch Pulse, complete the rebrand and open a new category in a single half, at no extra cost and in roughly half the time. This is a phenomenally exciting time to be building in tech - and to be backing AI-first businesses.
The sequencing this half was deliberate. As the fundraise progressed, investor feedback pointed back to the same thing: commercial proof points, particularly enterprise revenue and a first Tier-1 issuer pilot. We prioritised delivering those milestones during H1, and believe they leave the business in a materially stronger position for the round ahead.
A final word. You are among a small group of people who backed Vela (FKA Reewild) from the start, and everything in this update exists because of that early conviction. Every investor on our cap table has come through friends, family or a warm introduction, and several of our most important commercial relationships - Mastercard and Freuds among them - arrived the same way. Others, including Nestlé, Carlsberg-Britvic and many more, are the result of our own direct outreach - credit to the team.
A few years ago, we could only have dreamed of the rooms we're walking into today. We've worked hard to earn our place in them, and we don't take that for granted. Your belief, patience and support are the reason we've been able to keep walking into ever bigger ones.
Thank you, as ever, for your continued support.
Onwards,
Freddie Lintell
Founder & CEO, Vela Rewards (FKA Reewild)
Last update vs this update
What we said in H2 2025 - what's happened since.
H2 2025 · what we said
H1 2026 · where we are
"Progressed a broader rebrand aligned with our evolution into a scalable loyalty platform."
Rebrand complete · Reewild is now Vela - new tone of voice, look and feel, social channels, and ~50 new reward offers focused on aspirational lifestyle rewards. The first action of H1.
"Built and validated a repeatable brand-facing proposition for QSR and CPG."
Pulse shipped - our B2B insights dashboard gives brands verified item-level purchase data across retailers.
"Submitted proposals to Nestlé and Sapling (~£120k weighted ARR)."
Nestlé £65k Test & Learn agreed across San Pellegrino, Buxton and Nescafé (launching Q4); Carlsberg-Britvic £20k T&L agreed; Sapling live. Four additional customers at proposal stage.
"By mid-2026, success will be defined by at least one live Tier-1 banking deployment."
Mastercard introductions to Monzo, Edenred, UP and Pluxee. Live conversations across UK and Europe.
Every commitment from our last update is now in motion. The next two we expect to close: landing the Nestlé Q4 campaign live, and the first Tier-1 issuer pilot agreed.
Pulse is the headline commercial release of this half. It is the brand-facing surface our partners now log into - and it is what makes Vela materially more than a consumer rewards app.
What Pulse does. It turns receipt and transaction data into the campaign signals brands actually want - verified, cross-retailer, item-level purchase data, which rewards drove behaviour, and how each campaign converted into real basket activity. Brands today either see their own retailer's data (Tesco/Dunnhumby, Sainsbury's/Nectar360) or buy panel surveys. Pulse is the first surface giving brands SKU-level purchase data independent of any single retailer. As the Nestlé brand team put it: "this is the first time we can see whether our loyalty spend actually moved the SKU."
Why it matters commercially. Pulse is the surface we charge for. It converts what used to be bespoke reporting into a self-serve enterprise product - collapsing ops cost per programme and unlocking repeatable platform-fee revenue across every brand we onboard.
New this half
Pulse pricing model + ROI calculator now live for partners.
Self-serve pricing tiers and a campaign-level ROI calculator brand teams can use to quote and qualify themselves - moving more of the sales motion onto the product surface.
Verified purchase volume, redemption velocity and reward burn-down across every retailer in a single view.
Cross-retailer leakage
See where your shoppers buy the rest of their basket - and which competitor SKUs they switch to.
Programme ROI in real time
Incremental basket lift, frequency change and contribution margin attributable to each reward pool.
Pulse adoption · who is actually using it
Five brands inside Pulse, weekly opens.
Brands on Pulse
5
First named partners with active logins
Open cadence
Weekly
Brand teams logging in on a weekly rhythm
Named users include
Nestlé Nescafé brand team · Sapling
Real brand-side weekly usage, not pilot demos
Vela Pulse - 90-second walkthrough
Rebrand complete · 90-second concept
Reewild is now Vela.
This H1 we completed the full rebrand from Reewild to Vela - new name, identity, tone of voice and ~50 new aspirational lifestyle rewards in market. The 90-second advert concept below is the visual expression of where the brand sits now: better everyday choices, aspirational rewards, and a route toward more thoughtful consumption.
Vela - B2C launch & rebrand film
▶
Watch the Vela B2C launch & rebrand film
The consumer story now in-market.
Deeper context
The full rebrand rationale - and the live consumer site.
Two further surfaces if you want to go deeper: the rebrand strategy deck (why we moved from Reewild to Vela, the brand architecture, audience and positioning logic), and the live consumer site as it sits in market today.
These partnerships - at varying stages of commercial and procurement progress - validate a repeatable model that enables brands to reward verified purchases across retailers while generating item-level purchase insights that brands can't typically access.
Agreed for Q4
Nestlé · San Pellegrino / Buxton / Nescafé +
£65k campaign
Test & Learn agreed across three Nestlé brands - including Nescafé, the world's largest coffee brand. Launching Q4.
Initial campaign across San Pellegrino, Buxton and Nescafé. The activation will be distributed through Nestlé's first-party CRM of ~2.5m consumers; their email pushes typically convert ~10k engagers each - driving an expected user spike from September ahead of the Q4 campaign launch.
Success unlocks a pathway to scale across the wider Nestlé portfolio. Strategically: this is the world's largest F&B company validating verified, cross-retailer item-level reward mechanics.
Initial T&L agreed
Carlsberg-Britvic +
£20k initial T&L
Initial Test & Learn agreed. Campaign to be shaped around one of Kronenbourg 1664, Carlsberg, Poretti, Tango, J20 or Robinsons.
First commercial engagement following the Carlsberg–Britvic merger - opening a pathway across one of the UK's largest beverage portfolios spanning beer, premium lager, soft drinks and squashes.
Success on the initial T&L unlocks the rest of the brand house: cross-category insight into how the same consumer moves between beer, mixers and soft drinks is exactly the basket-level signal Pulse is built to surface.
Annual programme · live
Imperial College London +
~£32k / year
Designed to lift basket value and frequency across £9m+ annual catering revenue.
Based on modelling assumptions of ~10% programme participation, the initiative could generate approximately £50k incremental annual sales for Imperial - based on conversions we proved at UCL in 2025.
Strategically important: tied to a wider operator serving 20+ universities across the UK, creating a clear pathway for expansion across additional campuses.
MSA + pilots under discussion
Mastercard +
MSA + pilots
Master Services Agreement under discussion as the legal shell, with specific deployments priced underneath as pilot / order forms.
A broad MSA that lets specific deployments be priced underneath as pilots - aligning both with Mastercard's internal KPI (live product integrations at scale) and Start Path's (deals inked and revenue generated). Three commercial roles being shaped in parallel: A · channel partner (Vela deploys with issuers, co-brands, merchants and food delivery - integration + platform + success fees); B · data partner (campaign measurement, switching analytics, category insight); C · sponsored innovation (Mastercard funds pilots like meal card issuers, Nespresso / Dynamic Yield-style, Imperial / Edenred).
Each role addresses a different budget centre - distribution, data revenue, innovation - reducing single-line dependency. We expect to land a hybrid: an A-style channel commercial with a C-style innovation pilot as the entry wedge.
The product, in your hand
Inside the rebuilt app.
A walk through the rebuilt consumer app - the surface where every metric in this update is generated. Each screen below is a live page from the new build: home, member tier, reward discovery, engagement streaks, aspirational redemption, itemised receipts, seasonal challenges, impact scoring, the Insiders community and Vela Plus sign-up.
Home - balance, rewards, daily activity · the hub of the app
Reward discovery - curated by category · Starbucks, Costa, Just Eat, Deliveroo
Seamless purchase tracking - link cards · SKU-level basket capture in seconds
Vela Insiders - early-access community · joining reward
Vela Plus sign-up - premium tier · £5.99/month or £59/year
Plus Member - earned badge · shareable
Programme spotlight
Sapling Spirits - live this half.
Our first H1 brand campaign in market. Sapling went live mid-half, rewarding verified Sapling purchases across retailers with Pulse providing the brand team real-time visibility on basket lift, frequency change and reward burn-down.
Founder endorsement
Instagram reel
Performance data - verified purchases, basket lift vs control, redeemer retention - is now collecting through Pulse. We will share the first material readout in the H2 2026 update; early signal is in line with the +9.8% transaction frequency uplift demonstrated in our prior validation campaigns.
Payments ecosystem
Active engagement with both Mastercard and Visa.
Engagement with global payment networks continued to strengthen across H1. Live conversations are open with both Mastercard and Visa on distribution and strategic partnership opportunities.
Worth being honest about the reality of these deals: enterprise sales remain slow and procurement-heavy, and cycles are long. That's a trade-off we are deliberately making to establish a select number of high-value reference customers rather than chase dozens of smaller ones.
Mastercard
Onboarded as a Mastercard supplier
Progressing toward item-level data supplier status
Multiple integrations and opportunities under active planning - across merchants, issuers, sporting stadiums, and online fast-food delivery in the UK and US (DoorDash, Instacart and category leaders)
Item-level data supplier status would allow Vela's infrastructure to integrate directly into issuer and merchant analytics environments.
Visa
Card-linked offers inclusion targeted for late Q4
Issuer benefit integration explored for Vela Plus
Broader partnership discussions ongoing across the network
Visa is exploring integration within Visa Infinite card programmes - a potential pathway into the ~20M+ affluent European cardholders across 73 partner banks, with combined network reach of 153M users when paired with the Visa Signature and Platinum tiers.
Mastercard issuer pathway
Four live issuer opportunities across the UK and Europe. Two specifically anchor the next two milestones - the first issuer pilots that re-rate the conversation with the payment networks.
Next milestone · Edenred
First issuer pilot · anchored on Imperial
The Mastercard-introduced Edenred pilot will land on our live Imperial College deployment - joining a working programme rather than starting from a cold integration. Pilot scope planning.
After Edenred · Pluxee Romania
Second issuer pilot · European prepaid market
Pluxee Romania is the second Mastercard-introduced issuer in motion - direct entry into the €20bn European prepaid meal-card market Mastercard prioritised in our last update.
Monzo
United Kingdom
11M+ UK customers
Digital bank
Edenred
Europe-wide
60M cardholders · €45bn volume
Prepaid meal cards
UP
Romania · Up Group
35M users globally
Employee benefits
Pluxee
Romania (ex-Sodexo)
36M users globally
Prepaid meal cards
Each is a live Mastercard introduction - the network is offering them because issuers and benefit operators are actively looking for differentiated loyalty layers tied to item-level data.
Consumer engagement
The stickiness signal is strong - by design.
Purchases tracked have grown roughly 10× over the last 12 months - at zero paid acquisition spend, entirely organic. The shape of the growth, and the depth of the cohort behaviour beneath it, is what tells us this product is worth scaling.
Why the cohort looks the way it does
We have deliberately not gone for top-of-funnel growth at any cost. The H1 plan was always to prove the reward mechanic on small organic cohorts - so the retention number is real, not an artefact of paid acquisition - and then scale that proven loop through enterprise partner audiences rather than ever-rising CAC. A ~20% Day-30 retention curve on an organically acquired cohort is a far stronger signal of underlying product–market fit than the same curve on paid acquisition. The Nestlé 2.5m-consumer CRM push expected in September is the first material moment that scale arrives - at no cost to us.
Points Earned
Total, last 366 days
Total Active Users vs New Users (Weekly)
Unique, since May 22nd, 2025
User Retention
Retention rate, last 3 months - Day 0 to Day 60
Retention remains stable. After the initial drop-off, cohorts stabilise with ~15–20% returning between Day 30–60 - roughly 2× the consumer-app benchmark (industry Day 30 averages typically sit at 5–10%; top-decile consumer apps land around 10–13%). The cohort that tracks once tends to keep tracking.
Product expansion · new vertical
Vela is no longer just food and drink.
H1 saw us extend the platform into health & beauty - opening the second of the multi-vertical categories on our roadmap and unlocking an order-of-magnitude expansion in addressable spend, brand budgets and the dataset itself.
The mechanic is identical: a consumer tracks a purchase or links a transaction, the platform parses the SKU, matches it to structured data, and rewards the behaviour. The unlock is who funds it. Health & beauty brings the world's largest, most marketing-intensive consumer brands directly into our addressable buyer pool.
Global H&B market
~$580bn
Annual global consumer spend - among the most marketing-intensive categories in retail.
UK retail (H&B)
~£12bn
High-frequency, high-loyalty, basket-attached purchases - perfectly suited to track-and-reward.
Brand budgets unlocked
10×+
H&B marketing budgets dwarf food & drink - and these brands are actively looking for verified, cross-retailer purchase signal.
The buyer pool this opens up
The expansion makes Vela directly relevant to the global majors that dominate the category - companies that combined spend tens of billions on marketing, sampling and loyalty each year, and have the same need for SKU-level, cross-retailer signal that our food & drink partners do.
P&G
P&G
~$84bn revenue
L
L'Oréal
~€41bn revenue
U
Unilever
~€60bn revenue
R
Reckitt
~£14bn revenue
E
Estée Lauder
~$16bn revenue
B
Beiersdorf
~€10bn revenue
C
Coty
~$6bn revenue
H
Henkel
~€22bn revenue
First conversations already underway
The expansion is not theoretical. Inside the half we opened our first H&B conversation at scale:
Kao Corporation · introduction facilitated by Mastercard
Mastercard facilitated the introduction to Japanese consumer-goods major Kao Corporation - owner of Molton Brown since 2005 and parent to a wider H&B portfolio including Bioré, Jergens, John Frieda, Curel and Kanebo. The conversation opens via Molton Brown but addresses the full Kao brand house: ~¥1.5tn (~$10–12bn) annual group revenue and the first Asia-Pacific corporate sponsor in our pipeline alongside the existing European and US relationships. A second proof point that the Mastercard relationship is delivering inbound at scale.
Beyond TAM, the strategic value compounds. A consumer basket that includes both food and beauty tells a more complete story about who that consumer is and how they spend - and a more complete story is worth materially more to every buyer on the data ladder, all the way through to the alt-data buyers in the long-term thesis.
Product & technology
Three reinforcing layers of long-term defensibility.
During H1, we transitioned the platform to a fully AI-native development approach, significantly increasing development velocity. The platform captures item-level purchase data, matches it to structured datasets such as carbon and nutrition scoring, and applies incentives that drive defined behaviours.
01
Horizontal loyalty infrastructure
A flexible reward layer that plugs into brands, retailers and issuers - not tied to any single channel.
02
Proprietary item-level data
SKU-level purchase insight matched to carbon, nutrition and category-leakage signals brands can't typically access.
03
Distribution via payment networks
Mastercard and Visa pathways unlock reach to millions of cardholders and billions of purchase events.
Together, these components form a data and distribution layer connecting brands, retailers and financial institutions.
Product development velocity - compounding
The single cleanest evidence that the operating model is working: how much faster the team ships now than 12 months ago. Two views.
PRs merged · 12-month view
+445% · 32/week avg · vs prior 12 months
PRs merged · last 6 months
+64% · 40/week avg · last 6 vs prior 6 months
Two drivers, in sequence. The first step-change - the long-horizon +445% - came from establishing our Hyderabad engineering team: pure delivery capacity going from a small UK cell to a meaningfully larger one. The second - the +64% over the last six months - is compounding on top: AI-native development giving the same team another step up in shipped throughput. The two work in series, distributed capacity with AI agents inside it.
Commercial pipeline & milestones
Brand budgets, scaling our user base.
The commercial model is now clear. Each customer below is a brand or issuer paying Vela to drive measurable behaviour in their category - and, in the same motion, deploying their own marketing spend to bring real consumers onto the Vela platform. Their budgets become our distribution. Their reward spend becomes verified, item-level purchase data we own forever. Every contract below is therefore two outcomes at once: revenue, and a step-change in our reach and dataset.
Forecast contracted ARR - Base Case
Path to break-even and Series A, three-year horizon. Numbers from the financial model.
£220k
FY27
£736k
FY28
£1.2M
FY29
Break-even ARR
£796k
Crossed in late FY28 base case · ~85% GP margin on Vela fee revenue
Series A trigger
£1M ARR · Q4 2027
Targets ~£50M pre-money · 4.2× uplift on current valuation for existing investors
Year 3 EBITDA · Base / Upside
+£146k / +£205k
Profitable in Year 3 base case · Upside adds a second enterprise: £1.34M ARR
Pipeline - by stage
Stage 01 · Realised
£45k realised · H1 2026
First commercial revenue billed to Mastercard - product development and prototyping partnership with UCL and WRI.
Customer
Stage
Value
Context
Mastercard
Realised
£45k
Product development and prototyping with UCL and WRI
Stage 02 · Verbally agreed · contracts in drafting
£157k near-term · expansion pathway across the wider Nestlé portfolio
Commercial terms agreed with named owner; paperwork in legal drafting. Conversion risk is execution timing, not commercial fit. Nestlé procurement completes next week across San Pellegrino, Buxton and Nescafé, with supplier onboarding through Nestlé's CRM partner HHG from 6 July. The Q4 Test & Learn unlocks a step-change pathway across the wider Nestlé portfolio in FY27.
Customer
Stage
Value
Context
Imperial College London
Expected September
£20–30k
Annual programme · pathway to 20+ UK university operator
Mastercard · Imperial collaboration
Expected September
£30k
Mastercard-funded collaboration on the Imperial College programme · September delivery
Nestlé · San Pellegrino
Procurement completing next week
Part of £65k Nestlé T&L
Premium sparkling water · global brand activation
Nestlé · Buxton
Procurement completing next week
Part of £65k Nestlé T&L
UK still water · category-leading brand
Nestlé · Nescafé
Procurement completing next week
Part of £65k Nestlé T&L
The world's largest coffee brand · 2.5m-consumer CRM activation in September
Carlsberg-Britvic
Verbally agreed
£20k initial
Initial T&L to be shaped around Kronenbourg 1664, Carlsberg, Poretti, Tango, J20 or Robinsons · Sep/Oct
Sapling Spirits · re-up
In negotiations
~£10k
Follow-on programme · informed by Pulse-measured H1 lift
Stage 03 · Active pipeline
£140k+ named · significant network distribution behind it
Active commercial conversations with named owners; pre-verbal stage. Includes the two issuer pilots that anchor the Mastercard distribution thesis.
Customer
Stage
Value
Context
Mastercard · Edenred pilot
Pilot scope planning
Pilot value in scoping
Mastercard-introduced · anchored on the live Imperial programme · first issuer pilot
Mastercard · Pluxee Romania
Pilot scope planning
Pilot value in scoping
Second issuer pilot · direct entry into the €20bn European prepaid meal-card market
Visa · Vela Plus · Visa Infinite
Pilot scoping
£140k indicative
~20M+ affluent EU cardholders in scope · running in parallel with Mastercard pathway
Immediate Media
Active
£52k
BBC Good Food, Radio Times · 22M users
Wonderfield · Dr Will's · MOTH · Bold Bean Co
Proposals out
TBC
Challenger CPG cluster · expected to convert across H2 / early FY27
2026 milestones - what we're tracking this year
H1 2026 · Achieved
Sapling live · Imperial live · Pulse shipped · Mastercard supplier signed · health & beauty vertical opened
Three programmes live, B2B dashboard (Pulse) shipped to first partners, Mastercard supplier status secured, and the platform extended into a major new vertical. Retention at ~20% Day 30–60 - ~2× consumer-app benchmark.
Sep 2026 · Pre-campaign push
Nestlé CRM activation - expected September user spike
Pre-campaign email push from Nestlé to their 2.5m-consumer first-party CRM ahead of Q4 launch. Typical Nestlé pushes convert ~10k engagers - our first material paid-acquisition-equivalent moment.
Q4 2026 · Target
Nestlé · San Pellegrino / Buxton / Nescafé campaign live
£65k initial Test & Learn campaign agreed across three Nestlé brands - including Nescafé, the world's largest coffee brand. First proof point inside Nestlé, with a clear pathway to wider portfolio scale-up.
By mid-2026 · Target
First Tier-1 issuer pilot agreed
Best-case criterion for the half: a signed pilot with one of the Mastercard-introduced issuers - Monzo, Edenred, UP or Pluxee - putting us into a live test with a Tier-1 partner. Visa Plus · Visa Infinite pilot scoping running in parallel.
Wonderfield, Dr Will's, MOTH and Bold Bean Co progress from proposal to active.
H2 2026 · Growth test
First paid marketing test - Meta & TikTok
Deliberate, measured channel-validation test across the two platforms most relevant to our 25–45 lifestyle audience. Objective: benchmark blended CAC and downstream cohort behaviour against the organic baseline before any wider ramp.
End of FY27 · March 2027
£220k contracted ARR (base case)
Build path to £500k ARR Q1 2027 → break-even (£796k) → £1M ARR Q4 2027, when Series A positioning triggers at ~£50M pre-money (4.2× uplift on current valuation).
Risk & mitigation
What we're actively managing.
Three risks worth flagging openly, in the order they matter.
Risk · 01 · highest
Customer concentration & long PLC procurement cycles
The path to break-even runs through a small number of large customers. In the FY27 base case, the top three customers (Nestlé, the first Mastercard issuer, Carlsberg-Britvic) account for ~85% of forecast ARR. A slip on any one is material. Compounding this: selling into FTSE / global PLCs is slow - Nestlé took ~7 months from first conversation to agreed T&L. This is the right strategic choice - concentrated enterprise revenue is more durable than scattered SME - but it is the risk that needs naming first.
Mitigation. Multiple deals run in parallel so no single conversation gates the half: Nestlé, Carlsberg-Britvic, the wider proposal cluster on the brand side; Edenred, Pluxee, Visa Infinite on the issuer side. Mastercard / Visa introductions compress cycle times. Smaller live programmes (Sapling, Imperial) keep cash moving while the larger deals progress. Where commercially possible we will push for upfront payment or minimum commits in the contracted T&Ls; the Nestlé Q4 paperwork now in drafting is the first test of that posture.
Risk · 02
Points liability & redemption exposure at scale
Every point earned by a user is a liability on our balance sheet until it is redeemed against a reward or expires. At current cohort sizes the exposure is small and fully modelled. But as we scale - particularly through the Nestlé CRM push, Mastercard-introduced issuer audiences and any future paid-acquisition ramp - the aggregate liability grows in step with users and redemption frequency. Grow too fast without matching brand-funded reward pool coverage and the P&L absorbs the delta.
Mitigation. Exposure is actively modelled month-over-month and stress-tested against Nestlé / issuer-scale onboarding scenarios. Structural safeguards already in place: brand-funded reward pools sized to expected redemption windows, expiry windows on points earned, minimum daily and weekly redemption throttles that smooth redemption velocity, reward-partner exclusives that transfer cost of goods to the partner rather than us, and Vela Plus subscription revenue offsetting the P&L directly. Points that expire unredeemed - what the loyalty industry calls breakage - flow back to Vela as cash, further reducing effective liability at scale.
Underlying all of this: we have been deliberately wary of pushing too hard on user acquisition until brand-funded reward pool coverage substantially matches the earned-point liability. That is the specific trade-off behind the small-but-sticky cohort you have seen this half.
Rewarding "better" choices puts Vela near regulated territory across CPG and H&B - not currently in-house expertise. As we expand from environmental into health and nutrition metrics, the surface area of potential claim risk grows.
Mitigation. On green claims we have worked hard to structure our approach conservatively: product-level Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) sourced from accredited third-party providers, no direct product-versus-product comparisons in-app, combined environmental-and-health scoring rather than single-attribute claims in isolation, and full methodology transparency across every surface. Health, nutrition and toxicity claims are newer territory as we open the H&B category - we are working through the framework carefully, applying the same third-party-scored and no-direct-comparison approach. A senior scientific-affairs hire is earmarked in the next phase of headcount build to bring this expertise in-house properly.
Press, Marketing, PR & recognition
Time to be heard.
Context worth flagging openly: we have never done any paid marketing or PR. Every metric in this update - the 10× growth in purchases tracked, the ~20% Day 30–60 cohort retention, the partnerships - has been delivered organically, on word-of-mouth and direct outreach. That has been the right discipline through the build years; it will not be the right discipline through the next phase.
Featured · The Climate Pledge
Vela is featured in a July 2026 editorial story from The Climate Pledge - the corporate climate commitment co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism (now 500+ signatory companies globally). The piece profiles our joint action pilot with Mastercard: 158.46 kg of CO₂ avoided, 5.5% higher basket spend and 9.8% more transactions per month across a 111-day pilot. First external, brand-independent proof point that the reward-system model can move consumer behaviour at scale - from a body whose credibility sits squarely with the audience we are trying to reach.
Vela is featured in Mastercard's 2025 Impact Report - Mastercard's annual corporate publication read by shareholders, regulators, ESG analysts and enterprise partners globally. Being cited in a public document of that reach, by our most important commercial partner, materially raises the credibility floor of every subsequent conversation we walk into - with issuers, brands and enterprise buyers alike. It also signals that Mastercard are comfortable being publicly associated with Vela on their most visible corporate stage, which is a meaningful upgrade from a purely commercial relationship.
Freuds Communications · the right firm at the right moment
Freuds Communications is arguably the best-suited PR firm in our space - strong track record across the consumer, brand and impact stories that map directly to where Vela sits. They also bring a meaningful celebrity-endorsement network we plan to lean on through this next phase - a faster way to attach face and credibility to the Vela story than traditional earned media alone. Not cheap, but the right agency at the right moment, and one we will engage as the next chapter opens.
Alongside Freuds for PR, we are also evaluating a social / creative agency to drive marketing creative and content velocity across paid channels - the two work in series, not parallel.
Looking ahead
Beyond the 2026 milestones - what we're building toward.
The 2026 calendar above is the near-term execution plan. The medium-term build is broader: expanding the behavioural data model beyond food and drink. Health & beauty is already underway (see above); the categories that follow - wellness, household, pet, kids, fashion - each compound the dataset's value and widen the buyer ladder that closes this update.
The long-term thesis
The product is loyalty. The asset is the data.
Every purchase tracked and every transaction matched on the Vela platform writes one more row into a dataset that almost no one else has at scale: verified, item-level, cross-retailer consumer spend. Not a panel survey. Not a single-merchant feed. Real purchase events, tagged to SKUs, attributable to identifiable cohorts, growing daily.
The dataset compounds with GMV - the financial-model trajectory below is the floor, not the ceiling, once issuer distribution lands:
Today
£105k
Organic GMV tracked to date · live cohorts
FY27
£4.7M
Annual GMV tracked · base case
FY28
£17.6M
Annual GMV tracked · base case
FY29
£29M
Annual GMV tracked · before issuer scale-out
01
Live
Brands & CPG
SKU-level performance, share of basket, switching behaviour. Today's revenue line - Nestlé, Carlsberg-Britvic, Sapling.
Kantar, NielsenIQ, Circana sit on panel data. Vela offers verified spend at higher granularity and lower latency.
04
FY29 →
Quant hedge funds
Systematic funds pay YipitData, Earnest and Second Measure six- and seven-figure annual contracts for exactly this kind of granular spend signal. Vela's dataset at scale sits in that category.
The scale a mature issuer deployment reaches
£120k–£2m
Annual platform licences
Millions
Cardholders reachable
Billions
Item-level events
Category proof · recent exits in loyalty & rewards
Public markets · digital cashback · IPO April 2024 (ticker IBTA)
Reward
$230M cash exit
UK M&A · card-linked loyalty · acquired by Rezolve Ai · Feb 2026
Three recent exits, three routes - private growth, public IPO, UK cash M&A. Vela plays in the same category.
As GMV scales through issuer distribution, the addressable revenue per unit of data widens by an order of magnitude. The two flywheels reinforce each other - and the second one prices in a market we don't yet sell into.
Continued support
Thank you - and where your network can move the needle.
You backed Vela early. Everything in this update is what your capital has built. None of it exists without that early conviction.
Commercial introductions
If anyone in your network sits in CPG, retail, beauty, foodservice or payments - particularly at the global houses (P&G, Unilever, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Diageo, Reckitt, L'Oréal) or at Tier-1 issuers - a single warm introduction is the highest-leverage thing you can do for us. The next 90 days matter most - with Nestlé landing for Q4 and the first issuer pilot in motion, this is the moment to double down and open every conversation we can. The more customers we start conversations with now, the harder the momentum becomes to stop.
Strategic networks · family offices in our orbit
Where retail, FMCG and consumer capital sits.
Each family below sits on capital and operating insight in exactly the categories Vela now plays in - retail, brand, FMCG, fashion, beauty, foodservice. If your network touches any of them, an introduction in any capacity (a conversation, a category insight, a senior contact) is the kind of compounding move our cap table has always grown on.
Rausing family· Tetra Pak · packaging behind global FMCG
Mars family· confectionery, pet, food · private FMCG giant
Pritzker family· hospitality, consumer · long-horizon US capital
Cadbury & Wittington UK families· UK FMCG & retail legacy capital
Please reply to the cover email this update came with, or message me directly. Even a name and a one-line context is enough. This list is not exhaustive - introductions to other families, founders or high-net-worth individuals in adjacent categories are equally welcome.
Visa
Nestlé · San Pellegrino
Nestlé · Buxton
Nestlé · Nescafé
Sapling Spirits · re-up
Visa · Vela Plus · Visa Infinite
Immediate Media
