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OneOnMe is a social gifting platform built around a simple idea: make it easy to send real-world experiences as gifts, instantly.
Instead of sending generic gift cards, users can send a specific item from a specific venue.
Whether it is a latte from a favorite café or a comforting meal after a long day, the experience is social and contextual. Users can connect their contacts, save favorite venues, and maintain a digital “nest” of gifts inside the app.
From the recipient's perspective, the experience feels personal and immediate. A text arrives: “Rachel sent you a coffee at Your Favorite Cafe,” and with one tap, the gift opens in the app, is added to the mobile wallet, and can be redeemed in-store.
Behind this seamless experience sits a complex financial infrastructure challenge.
The Problem
OneOnMe’s vision was simple: make social gifting as personal as buying a friend a latte at their favorite local spot. Bringing that vision to life, however, required overcoming two major hurdles.
POS Integration Limitations
Initially, OneOnMe planned to integrate directly with point-of-sale systems (POS) at each venue. While this promised precise item-level control, the model presented operational challenges:
- Limited scalability: Each merchant would still need to manually opt in.
- Operational drag: Onboarding required heavy manual coordination rather than seamless product adoption.
- Growth bottlenecks: For a lean, early-stage team, expansion was tied to human effort rather than software.
The team explored virtual cards as a scalable alternative. If each gift could generate a card redeemable at the venue, recipients could enjoy a seamless experience without requiring POS integrations at every merchant.
Banking Barriers and Revenue Minimums
Pivoting to virtual cards introduced another set of challenges. Traditional banking providers often imposed strict requirements on early-stage platforms:
- Revenue gaps: Some required millions in monthly revenue just to onboard.
- Risk aversion: Consumer-facing gifting platforms were considered high risk.
- Opaque processes: Approval cycles were slow, favoring larger enterprises.
Even after building toward launch with a provider, OneOnMe encountered unexpected revenue requirements late in the process. The team realized they needed a partner that understood API-driven fintech innovation and could support early-stage growth.
Why Berkeley
OneOnMe was introduced to Berkeley through a processor partner, and the difference was clear from the start.
Berkeley confirmed that OneOnMe’s model was feasible using open-loop Visa virtual cards with mobile wallet compatibility and API-driven card creation and management.
Equally important, Berkeley approached the relationship as a technology partnership rather than a gatekeeping institution. This was critical for a founding team without traditional banking experience.
They needed:
- Fraud protection
- Chargeback handling
- Bank-level fund safeguarding
- Regulatory coverage
- Confidence in ongoing compliance
Berkeley delivered all of this while aligning with OneOnMe’s pace and scale.
Early Complexity and Alignment
As with many fast-moving fintech implementations, the early phase of the partnership coincided with broader platform evolution at Berkeley. This introduced some natural sequencing adjustments and required both teams to align on priorities and timing during implementation.
For OneOnMe, predictable timelines and clear communication were especially important given launch and investor commitments. While plans evolved, both teams remained focused on the shared objective: establishing a durable, scalable payments foundation.
Through closer collaboration and continued refinement of implementation processes, the partnership quickly found its rhythm. Communication became increasingly proactive, timelines stabilized, and attention shifted fully toward delivering a reliable production launch.
The result was a strong operational foundation that continues to support OneOnMe as the platform scales.
Building the Right Architecture
By partnering with Berkeley, OneOnMe moved away from a gatekeeping financial model toward a technology-first, API-driven architecture.
“A lot of financial providers felt stuck in legacy processes. Talking to Berkeley immediately felt more modern with great API docs, clean integrations, and a team that understands how technology companies actually work,”
– Rachel LaBreck, Co-Founder and CEO, OneOnMe
Open-Loop Virtual Cards with Curated Experience
Instead of relying on POS access, Berkeley helped OneOnMe issue virtual cards tied to the gift:
- Unique identity: Each gift generates a unique card linked to the recipient and venue.
- Curated experience: Venue name and item are embedded in the card to keep the experience personal.
- Zero friction: Eliminates the need for individual POS integrations while preserving the social, thoughtful feel of the gift.
One-Tap Mobile Wallet Integration
Push-provisioning enabled recipients to add gifts directly to Apple Pay or Google Pay with a single tap:
- Instant utility: Cards are ready to redeem immediately.
- Massive adoption: 99% of recipients add their gift to their wallet.
- Seamless orchestration: Berkeley managed the coordination between networks, banks, and processors to make it work effortlessly.
- Merchant-friendly redemption: Because gifts live in the recipient's mobile wallet, redemption works like any standard tap-to-pay transaction. Merchants require no special hardware, no manual entry, and no additional training — the gift simply processes at checkout like a regular card payment.
Just-in-Time Funding
A just-in-time funding model optimized capital efficiency:
- Strategic float: Cards are generated when a gift is sent, but funds remain under OneOnMe’s control until redemption.
- Real-time loading: Funds are loaded only when the recipient taps “redeem.”
- Operational efficiency: Ensures capital isn’t idle and investor confidence remains high.
Production Support and Reliability
Post-launch, the partnership was tested during a time-sensitive mobile wallet issue. Berkeley’s rapid response ensured resolution within an hour, highlighting the operational reliability critical to OneOnMe’s business.
“The Berkeley team just feels equally invested in our success as we are,”
– James Mensch, Co-Founder and CTO, OneOnMe
The Results
OneOnMe now operates a live, scalable gifting platform powered by Berkeley’s infrastructure.
Key outcomes as of Q1 2026 include:
- 1,500+ venues available: New venues can be added at any time without POS integrations.
- 99% wallet adoption: Recipients consistently add gifts to their mobile wallets.
- Intended Merchant Redemption: Gifts are redeemed exactly as designed, preserving the personal and social nature of each experience.
- Capital efficiency: Just-in-time funding ensures funds are used optimally.
- Bank-level security: Enterprise-grade fraud prevention and regulatory coverage protect both platform and users.
Strategically, Berkeley serves as a foundational infrastructure and technology partner, enabling OneOnMe to deliver its core product experience at scale:
“Our payments infrastructure is central to how the product works. Having a technology partner like Berkeley means we can focus on building the gifting experience while trusting that the payments layer is reliable, secure, and scaling with us,””
– James Mensch, Co-Founder and CTO, OneOnMe
Payments as the Foundation for Scale
OneOnMe set out to simplify social gifting. By partnering with Berkeley, the platform navigated the complexities of virtual card issuance, mobile wallet enablement, regulatory compliance, and capital management.
The result is a frictionless user experience (for both recipients and merchants) powered by a sophisticated payments architecture. In this case, the card is not the product; it is the enabler that makes the product work seamlessly.
Through this partnership, what could have been a merchant-integration bottleneck became a scalable, wallet-first payments model that supports growth without operational drag.
Payments infrastructure is not just for traditional financial services; Berkeley shows how it can power innovative consumer experiences.
