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GET EARLY ACCESS
Every dollar you run through payroll now earns rewards you can redeem for travel, cash back, gift cards, and a few things we’re still cooking up.
Payroll is the single largest check most companies write, and until today it earned them nothing. Airlines did this for flights in 1981. Cards did it for spend in the late '80s. Bilt did it for rent in 2021. Thera Rewards does it for payroll: one point for every dollar you run through Thera, soon transferable to the airlines, hotels, and SaaS tools your business already uses.
INTRODUCING THERA REWARDS
Today, I'm proud to introduce Thera Rewards.
Thera is the first platform that lets companies earn points on payroll. For many of our members, payroll is their largest expense. For decades, payroll has been locked out of the rewards economy.
Until now.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANUFACTURED CURRENCIES
1981, airlines invent the category: American Airlines launches AAdvantage, the first frequent flyer program. The insight: reward the behavior you want more of (flights) with a currency that only works inside your system. Within a year, every major airline copies it.
Hotels follow: Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt turned a room night into points you earned to get rewarded to stay within their ecosystems.
Late '80s. The cards: Amex, Visa, and Mastercard realize they can do what airlines did. They start rebating a slice of interchange back to the customer as points. Every dollar of consumer spend suddenly earns something, creating a flywheel.
Category expansion: similar dynamics are mirrored in modern loyalty programs such as Starbucks Stars and Sephora Beauty Insider.
2021 housing joins in. Bilt proves that rent, which is the single largest check most consumers write each month, can be plugged into the rewards economy. A category that had been structurally locked out for decades is suddenly inside the tent.
Each program followed the same pattern: take a large recurring expense and create an ecosystem around it.
WHAT LOYALTY IS ACTUALLY WORTH
It's easy to dismiss points as a marketing expense. The airline industry would disagree.
Delta SkyMiles at $31.8 billion, American's AAdvantage at $26.7 billion, and United's MileagePlus at $25.3 billion. At multiple points over the last decade, each of these programs has been worth more than the airline that operates it.
The pandemic grounded the planes. The Big 3 mortgaged their loyalty programs instead of their aircrafts. United raised $6.8B against MileagePlus in mid-2020. Delta raised $9B against SkyMiles that fall. American raised $10B against AAdvantage in March 2021, the largest airline-backed financing in history.
Airlines learned the lesson: loyalty was the business, and the planes were where you redeemed.
WHY PAYROLL
Every dollar your business spends on software, ads, travel, and even coffee earns something back. Payroll, the biggest dollar of them all, earned you nothing.
Thera Rewards fixes that. One point for every dollar of payroll ran through Thera.
Soon, you'll be able to transfer Thera Points to major airlines, hotels, and travel, and Saas tools your business already uses.
WHY THERA
For 20 years, consumer fintech fought for share of wallet. Issuers bid interchange to win the top slot in a customer's pocket. Chase Sapphire Reserve is the canonical play: lose money on the card to win the customer's loyalty.
Thera competes for something different: share of payroll cashflow.
Thera is a finance OS for modern companies. For many of our members, every dollar in and every dollar out flows through Thera rails. Rewards are how those flows compound. The more cashflow you route through Thera, the richer the points get.
DAY ONE
This was a huge effort across product, engineering, and marketing. This is day one.
Thera Rewards is in beta now. Sign up for early access.
— Akhil