Bonusly has introduced credit-card top-ups for its rewards catalogue, allowing employees to combine earned recognition points with their own money when a gift card costs more than their available balance. The company announced the feature on May 4, 2026. [S01]
The change addresses a familiar constraint in points programmes: a recipient may have enough value to fund part of a reward, but not enough to redeem the denomination they want. Bonusly applies the points first, then charges the shortfall to the employee's personal card. Its detailed announcement says a processing fee is shown before the user confirms. Gift cards, charitable donations and curated gifts are eligible; custom rewards and custom swag are excluded. [S02]
How the funding requirement changed after launch
The initial May 4 announcement allowed a personal card to cover up to half the reward’s value. A later product change altered that boundary: Bonusly’s September 2 account of its August releases says the minimum points requirement dropped from 50% to a default of 10%. Administrators can adjust the minimum, so the change widens the permitted role of personal funding without requiring every employer to adopt the same policy. [S06]
Bonusly lowered the default points requirement for a top-up
Published product rules: earlier minimum versus the August 2026 change, announced September 2.
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Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
These are actual published eligibility thresholds, not observed redemption shares or customer behaviour. Administrators can set a different minimum or disable top-up; the later 10% default does not describe every employer’s policy or the original May launch.
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| Category | Reward value that must be covered by points |
|---|---|
| Earlier minimum points share | 50% |
| August default points share | 10% |
The current help article, read on October 19, separately specifies a processing charge of 5% plus $0.30 on the card-funded amount. It says points are not subject to that fee, administrators may set the minimum points percentage from 10% to 100%, and they may disable top-ups. These current details supplement the dated launch announcement; they are not a retrospective assertion that all of these settings applied in May. [S07]
The commercial significance is who pays for the additional value. An employer-funded recognition balance remains part of the transaction, but the recipient can add personal spending to complete it. That creates a route to a higher-value reward without requiring the employer to issue the extra points.
For gift-card brands distributed through the catalogue, the potential benefit is conversion: a recipient who would otherwise wait, choose a smaller reward or leave can complete a purchase. For Bonusly, a broader set of attainable rewards could make the redemption experience more useful. Those are economic implications of the mechanism, not sales or engagement gains established by the announcement.
The distinction matters when measuring the feature. An increase in total rewards value could partly reflect employees spending their own money, rather than an increase in employer generosity. Redemption value and the recognition budget would therefore describe different things.
Bonusly's roots are in peer-to-peer recognition. A customer profile published by its email-technology supplier, Twilio, dates the company's founding to 2012 and describes a platform built around employee micro-bonuses and rewards. [S03]
The Boulder-based company raised $18.9 million in a February 2023 funding round led by Ankona Capital. At the time, it said the capital would support its recognition platform, organisational analytics and sales and marketing. That history helps explain why a change at the rewards checkout belongs to a wider software business: recognition creates the points and workplace interactions, while redemption gives those points a practical use. [S04]
Bonusly's pricing materials distinguish the software subscription from rewards spending. The platform is therefore selling employers an ongoing recognition service, while also organising access to rewards. Top-ups add another participant to the funding equation, the employee, without replacing that employer relationship. [S05]
A top-up can solve a balance shortfall, but it is still an additional purchase. The employee contributes money and pays the disclosed processing charge; it is not an increase in the value of points already earned. The announcement does not specify a numerical fee, so the launch should not be read as a promise of fee-free redemption. [S02]
That leaves a practical commercial trade-off. Letting recipients choose a more expensive card may reduce frustration with fixed balances, yet the extra payment must remain clearly separate from the employer's reward. The useful measure is whether employees find the additional choice worthwhile after the charge, not simply whether the average catalogue transaction becomes larger.
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Suzie Elis
Suzie Elis covers gift card products, digital gifting and distribution for Gift Card News.