For George Bousis, the path to Solana was paved by a decade-old failure. In 2015, his company Raise launched the first tokenized gift card on Ethereum, only to hit a wall of high gas fees and slow finality that made the unit economics impossible for low-value retail transactions. Ten years later, the payments infrastructure giant—which has processed over $5 billion in volume—has found its solution. At Breakpoint 2025, Bousis announced that Raise has officially migrated its infrastructure to Solana, with 50,000 SmartCards already minted on Mainnet.

The implications for the $1.2 trillion gift card industry go beyond simple tokenization. Raise is replacing static digital receipts with programmable assets. During the keynote, Bousis detailed how this logic transforms retail operations: a brand like AMC Theatres can now program SmartCards to automatically trigger 50% discounts in specific regions based on real-time weather data oracle feeds. This shifts gift cards from passive liabilities into active, dynamic marketing channels that drive foot traffic when businesses need it most—all while eliminating the 20% fees retailers currently pay to legacy intermediaries.

This is not a testnet experiment. Raise is live today, backed by $265 million from heavyweights like NEA, Accel, PayPal Ventures, and Haun Ventures. The platform serves 7 million active customers and powers B2B solutions for Citibank and Bilt Rewards. By moving this volume on-chain, Raise is effectively bringing a massive, non-speculative user base to the Solana network, validating the chain's capacity to handle high-frequency, real-world commerce.

Looking ahead, the roadmap is aggressive. The company is rolling out its "Raise One" platform and has confirmed a native token launch for the first half of 2026. For institutional investors, this signals a rare opportunity: a Web3 infrastructure play that arrives with a decade of Web2 revenue, deep retailer partnerships (including Darden Restaurant Group and Best Buy), and a clear utility model that solves a quarter-trillion-dollar efficiency problem for merchants.