Pack ripping is having a moment in the US, and plenty of operators want in. Most of them don’t want to build the stack behind it themselves. B2Bux, a Macedonia-based startup, wants to be the company they call. “We can set you up in couple of weeks with the whole infrastructure,” CEO Viktor Atanasovski said on the BettingStartups Podcast.
B2Bux calls its category “revealing experiences,” meaning pack ripping and mystery boxes. Players open virtual packs of Pokémon cards, sports cards, and other collectibles. An animation plays, an RNG picks the outcome, and an image of a real physical card pops out. The player can return it for account credit, ship it home, or vault it for seven days before deciding. Behind that, B2Bux handles the tech, legal opinions, payment processing, and card supply. Operators can bolt it onto an existing brand or launch a standalone one, and Atanasovski said they can design their own packs from scratch.
Atanasovski has spent a decade in iGaming, starting at a UK affiliate business before launching his own affiliate venture in 2020, and selling a platform he built there. He came to B2Bux while pitching a mystery box idea to his eventual co-founder and CTO, who coincidentally had already started building it.
Early operator conversations have centered on integration, pricing, and catalog. One client is building golf-specific products. Operators coming from sweepstakes lean heavily toward rips over boxes, Atanasovski said, and the US is the main market for packs. Mystery boxes can go to tier-one markets more broadly. Japan is on the list to explore, but the design and mechanics there would be different, so for now he plans to stick to the US.
The business model will look familiar to anyone who has bought a casino platform: a one-time setup fee, then a share of GGR. Operators set the RTP, which controls margin, and on B2Bux’s own setup, a player who sells a card back gets 90% of its value in credit. Atanasovski said customer acquisition costs run “significantly lower” than casino or sweepstakes, though he wouldn’t put numbers on it before his own brand has data.
That brand is Ripley.us, a B2C pack-ripping site B2Bux is launching itself. Atanasovski calls it “the biggest showcase on our platform” and a way to learn acquisition, retention, and unit economics firsthand so he can coach operators through them. “So without the B2C, I think it’s going to be hard,” he said. “We want to just do the homework ourselves first.”
B2Bux has a few clients signed, some revenue, pre-seed backing, and a spot in the a16z Scout program. It’s now raising a few million dollars and talking with strategic investors. The 12-month goals are at least 10 operators live, two platforms signed as distribution partners, and Ripley.us running with steady acquisition spend. B2Bux is also building native apps so operators can offer more than a web product.
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