Runa

Paul Wilson serves as Chief Technology and Product Officer, overseeing the platform's engineering and product roadmap. The executive team also includes CEO Aron Alexander, who founded the business in 2016, and CFO Dynshaw Italia. Collectively they bring experience from category-defining payments companies including Rapyd, Hyperwallet, and Soldo.

No. Runa is a technology infrastructure provider, not a bank or licensed money transmitter. Its platform acts as middleware that connects businesses to a network of payment endpoints — gift cards, prepaid cards, and push-to-card rails — without holding customer funds or issuing regulated financial products directly. This architecture limits its direct regulatory exposure but means it relies on licensed partners for fund flows.

Runa was founded in 2016 as WeGift, an API-first platform that let businesses send digital gift cards programmatically. The company rebranded to Runa in 2023 when its product scope expanded to include prepaid cards, bank-account transfers, and a multi-rail payout network. The shift reflected its evolution from a rewards tool to a broader payouts infrastructure business.

Runa supports digital gift cards from over 5,000 retail merchants across 45 countries, push-to-card transfers to bank accounts in more than 190 countries via Visa Direct and Mastercard Send, and customizable reloadable prepaid Visa and Mastercard programs. The platform handles more than 160 payout currencies and originates funds in over 30 currencies.

Enterprise clients use Runa for consumer disbursements, cashback programs, sales incentives, rewards and recognition, member discounts, and rebates. Published clients include VoucherCodes, employee benefits platform Pluxee, and life insurance firm YuLife. Runa claims replacing fragmented payout vendors with its single API can reduce total cost of payouts and eliminate manual reconciliation work.