Hosted by Crowdcube and going live today at 11am, Swipii is seeking to raise £750,000 to accelerate expansion plans and extend the number of local businesses they work with, to support high streets across the country as they start to reopen.

Investors can invest from as little as £10.02 and Swipii will donate £5 to Social Bite for every investment of £250 or more, to help fund their mission of ending homelessness through social enterprise cafes.

Since launching the app in 2018, Swipii has helped 100 businesses predominantly in Scotland increase customer engagement and spend, while also saving shoppers money. Swipii personalised offers have, even during lockdown, seen participating businesses increase customer spend by 16%.

The company is currently working with British BIDs to roll out the service to hundreds more businesses across the country as lockdown begins to ease.

Founded by Louis Schena and Chitresh Sharma, the cashback app has already attracted over £3 million from LocalGlobe, Rocket Internet, Kima Ventures and Par Equity as it seeks to give local businesses the marketing and data tools to compete with larger online entities.

As businesses look to reopen and rebuild, Shop Local has never been more pertinent, as small businesses fight for survival after being closed throughout much of 2020/21 - while at the same time large online stores gained custom (Amazon saw revenue jump 40% in 2020 and posted an 84% rise in profits).

Consumers have also discovered the joy of supporting local - 54% of Brits say it’s important to them to shop locally and 43% saying they get a boost of happiness when they support local business owners.

In these tough economic times shopping local delivers more money back into the local economy - £746m+ additional benefit for local economies generated by small local firms through their re-spend, compared with large firms.

Other solutions connecting consumers and local businesses are outdated, clunky and ineffective; with small businesses mainly relying on paper stamp cards. Swipii doesn’t rely on separate loyalty cards but simply saves users money by providing cashback incentives when they shop locally with their normal bank card through seamless cardlink technology.

Louis Schena, Swipii co-founder and CEO, said: “Local independent businesses form the backbone of our economy. The unfortunate truth is they are decades behind online businesses and big corporations when it comes to the technology they have and as a result are at a significant disadvantage. COVID has widened this disadvantage and our mission is to level the playing field as markets open up! This crowdfund will allow us to ramp up our expansion plans and give investors the opportunity to back local and become part of our growth journey.”