Brands
Boat sails into smart savings with ‘Pay with Rewards’ checkout feature
MUMBAI: Who says good vibes can’t come with great value? Boat, India’s chart-topping audio and wearables brand, just turned up the volume on smart shopping. In a slick new collaboration with rewards-based payments network TWID, Boat has rolled out the ‘Pay with Rewards’ feature on its website making it easier for customers to redeem loyalty points across programs while checking out.
No more hoarding reward points with nowhere to spend them. With TWID’s technology baked right into the boAt checkout, shoppers can now pay for their favourite wearables, earphones, speakers, and smartwatches using their existing points without leaving the site or jumping through hoops.
Boat COO Gaurav Nayyar quoted, “At boAt, we always strive to enhance the customer journey. Our integration with TWID and the launch of ‘Pay with Rewards’ is a step towards smarter shopping. It’s about offering choice, convenience, and added value every time you buy.”
Commenting on the partnership TWID, co-founder & COO Rishi Batra said, “Boat has always been at the forefront of innovation, bringing music and technology together in ways that resonate with today’s generation. With our ‘Pay with Rewards’ technology, we’re ensuring higher conversions and ROI for them and enabling customers to seamlessly redeem their points to make every transaction more rewarding, Our goal is to turn reward points into a powerful payment option, and partnering with boAt is another crucial step in that direction.”
The feature is now live across Boat’s digital storefront, giving the brand’s massive fanbase a new reason to shop and save. With this move, boAt not only amps up convenience, but also reinforces its tech-forward, customer-first mantra, one reward point at a time.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
