Old ideas keep getting new life, thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones. And a company called Raise, which runs an online marketplace for gift cards, is the latest startup to take advantage. The Chicago-based company announced on Thursday a giant $56 million investment led by NEA, just two months after announcing a separate $18 million round of funding. CEO George Bousis told Re/code in an interview that the new investment values the two-year-old company at “just shy of a billion” dollars. He declined to provide an exact figure. A billion-dollar valuation for a gift card company? To explain why that’s not batshit crazy, NEA General Partner Tony Florence said the sleepy gift card market has moved to digital in a big way only in the last few years.

http://recode.net/2015/01/22/a-gift-card-startup-just-raised-56-million-at-nearly-a-1-billion-valuation/