Tag: Loyalty Card

The growth of Mobile Wallets and the importance of having integrated loyalty programs

Mobile Wallets offer benefits to all stakeholders, both customers and merchants, by bringing to live mobile payments with enhanced security features while allowing a faster checkout, but also enhancing loyalty solutions.

Mobile Payments Volume

Forecast US mobile in-store payment volume (Source: BI Intelligence´s 2016 Mobile Payments Report)

As expected, in-store mobile payments are growing and recent estimation finds that it will reach $75 billion this year and $503 billion by 2020.

Nevertheless, mobile payments still face some high barriers, but as loyalty programs are integrated and more consumers rely on their mobile wallets, adoption and usage will surge over the next years.

Consumers want more from their mobile wallets. The inclusive mobile wallet with features and services, on top of just debit and credit cards, is very appealing to consumers.

Mobile Coupon and Loyalty Program

Top features consumers want for Mobile Wallets (Source: Urban Airship Report – UK and US Adults Q2 2016)

Loyalty or store cards and coupons are among the most desired features for mobile wallet users. 60% of users have used a loyalty card through a mobile wallet, and there is a high demand with two-thirds of users wanting to. Coupons, like the loyalty programs, are the second most desired feature with 53% claiming that have used them and 62% of customers wanting coupons on mobile wallets.

Apple Wallet

Apple Wallet mobile coupon

Integrated marketing tools such as loyalty programs and other add-on feature are key to drive mobile wallet adoption and usage. Consumers are showing interest in wallets with integrated loyalty programs.

The new Passworks platform is here!

At Passworks our customers are always our focus, and as a result, we’ve just released the new version of our platform. Many of you have already experienced the new platform and be sure we appreciated all the feedback received.

Aside of many small improvements, the new platform brings:

  • A cleaner and more intuitive interface to design the passes and roll out the campaigns;
  • New features adding even more value to what our customers are already doing, including CSV file integration, EAN128/GS1 – 1D barcode integration, among other features, and preparation for upcoming releases;
  • New pricing model with monthly and yearly subscriptions in order to give you control over your campaign’s budget and, of course, with everything included (unlimited push notifications, pass updates, etc);
  • Several new functionalities were added to our API: https://api.passworks.io;

The right moment for Mobile Wallets…

New platform_35% New platform_39% New platform_57%

The shift to mobile is definitely happening in 2016! For more information or support to create your mobile coupon campaign contact us.

Have a great week! 🙂

 

*Sources: Forrester’s Consumer Technographics Financial Services Survey; NCH Marketing Services & State of the Mobile Coupon Industry report by Koupon Media

Passworks at RBTE 2016!

Passworks team will be present again at the RBTE event on March 9th & 10th at Olympia, in London!

Feel free to contact us to arrange a speed dating meeting or come by and visit us at stand 159 to further discuss what are the new features of mobile wallets and Beacons! We will be happy to meet you! 🙂
Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 15.22.30

Passworks Wallet: One for all and all-in-one!

Passworks Wallet gives to consumers the benefits and the same experience of Apple Wallet, allowing to store digital passes such as mobile coupons, event tickets, loyalty or store cards and boarding passes on Android devices with ease. And it also works offline.

Mobile wallets, such as Apple Wallet, brings great opportunities for brands to engage and communicate with their customers. On top, Apple Wallet (previous named as Passbook) is a native App which means that all consumers with iPhone have it and can automatically receive direct digital content from brands into their mobile phones. For Android users, the experience is not quite the same since Android Pay is not a native App, meaning that consumer with Android smartphones need to install a Mobile Wallet App to have access to the digital content.

Passworks Wallet
Passworks Wallet — The mobile wallet for Android users

That is why we developed our own wallet for Android:
Passworks Wallet.

For those who want to know more about the App or to create content for mobile wallets, you can always write us! 🙂

Passworks Loyalty Card Use Case

Introducing a loyalty card program and campaign has always been an effective way to increase sales whilst adding value for customers.

The paper and stamp is no longer the most efficient means to offer a loyalty card. Likewise the burden of carrying that tattered bit of paper, hidden away in a wallet hardly gives off the impression of offering good customer service. Even plastic loyalty cards, take up space in the wallet and don’t offer any interaction and engagement with the customer’s smartphone.

However, switching from the paper version to a safer, more convenient and relevant digital version is a more viable option for consumers whose smartphones are already heavily incorporated in to their daily lives. Through Passbook, Google Wallet or other wallet, it’s now easy to store multiple loyalty cards in one App to be used whenever you’re in your favourite stores.

Digital loyalty cards facilitate the whole process of acquiring points or stamps, storing them and then obtaining any rewards or free products. Stamps or points are added via the smartphone’s camera which scans the QR code of a tent card or poster kept behind the counter of a store. A member of staff then types in pre-determined information such as a username and password to verify the action and clicks a button on their system to send the updated points to the customer’s phone. The loyalty card is then automatically updated to show the changes to the customer’s balance.

Once the customer has gained a reward the QR code on the card is changed, allowing them to obtain their free item. The pass is then updated to return back to the start position or the necessary points are removed from the customer’s balance.

The luxury of storing a loyalty card in Passbook or Google Wallet is that it can be used alongside other digital wallet features, to allow the customer to get the best value and use out of a store’s technology. For example, a digital wallet enables you to obtain a coupon offer and then switch to the loyalty card to add points or gain a stamp, all in the same place, in a seamless process, saving time and energy.

Why Bricks-and-Mortar Stores Need to Embrace the Mobile

Bricks-and-mortar businesses have been losing ground on their online counterparts for years now as they are undercut by cheaper prices and more convenience for consumers. However, one advantage they can offer customers is the unique experience of having a physical location to display products and an opportunity to interact with staff.

The growing competition from online retailers means that the in-store experience and general customer service has never been more important for brick-and-mortar stores. Offering the consumer a seamless, interactive mobile experience is a vital way to do that.

In this digital age, where the smartphone is playing an increasingly significant role in influencing consumers’ spending habit, it’s essential that brands meet the high standards that their customers now expect of them. Digital wallets and close-proximity marketing are undoubtedly going to be part of the future of the customer-retailer in-store experience.

Making use of a dynamic mobile wallet pass has the potential to offer consumers a omni-channel retail experience that they desire. The many features of a digital wallet, including coupons and loyalty cards, allow the customer to incorporate their smartphone in to their shopping habits, whilst providing them value and creating brand loyalty.

The emergence of ibeacon technology which can be used in conjunction with mobile wallets, further underlines the potential to offer better, more relevant in-store experiences for customers and increases store traffic by enticing customers in to the store.

As a result of better access to a wider range of products and easy price comparison, the shift of power has switched to the consumer, as old-fashioned brand loyalty is disappearing, but for bricks-and-mortar stores embracing the changing nature of shopping habits is a must, with smartphone usage at the forefront.

 

First we had brick-and-mortar stores, then transactions moved online, and now Joe Pergola, vice president of sales and marketing at POS software and hardware provider AccuPOS, says location is even less important with the latest mobile payment options. “The museum gift shop eventually will have an event outside in the courtyard, and they want to bring some merchandise outside and sell it,” he offers as an example.

You can read more about Online Payments: Money Goes Mobile here.

The Growth and Rise of Mobile Wallets – Apple’s Passbook and Google Wallet

The current mobile wallet evolution is being fronted by Apple’s Passbook and Google Wallet with the ultimate goal of replacing physical wallets in favour of the smartphone. Both versions of mobile wallet offer roughly the same service, with a few variations.

Passbook and Google Wallet’s main features are storing passes, i.e. coupons, loyalty cards, boarding passes, cinema tickets, basically anything that used to be a piece of paper in your wallet, can now be kept safely in your smartphone. The principal concept is having one place on your phone to store everything you need.

Apple’s Passbook, launched in September 2012, is seen as the pioneer of using digital wallets to store loyalty cards and coupons, of which Starbuck’s was one its first brands. Although the app came out after Google’s, it’s path was clearly defined as a place to store passes rather than offer any form of payment.

Passbook is a native app, pre-installed in all iPhones, meaning that it only runs on Apple products and only those that run on iOS 6 system or later. One key feature of Passbook is that it enables iBeacon technology to offer geo-trigger push-notifications to iPhone users, which for example enables retailers to offer relevant, updated offers to customers whilst they are in their store. The iBeacon feature is something which Google are still in the process of developing.

The newest feature that Apple has added to iOS 7 system is a QR code scanner, used via the phone’s camera which allows the user to add mobile wallet content on-the-go. These passes can either be used as a digital pass or printed out to be used in-store.

Google Wallet’s journey to its current stage has been slightly different. Initially Google Wallet started as an online payment, Google’s answer to PayPal if you like, but the concept never took off and in September 2013 they moved to include the non-payment side, i.e. coupons, loyalty points, boarding passes etc. Google Wallet app that can run on any Android device with Android 2.3 or later and can even run on iPhones iOS 6.

In May 2013 Google rekindled their ambition to use Google Wallet as a payment alternative but this time by integrating it with Gmail enabling users to send money to anyone over the age of eighteen who has a Gmail account. Further in keeping with this idea Google have also introduced a quicker way to make online payments via the ‘Buy with Google’ button, allowing anyone with a Google Wallet account to make purchases on mobile apps and sites in only two clicks

As an extension of the app Google also now offer a physical debit card to go along with your Google Wallet app, which enables you to use its NFC (Near Filed Communication) technology to make one-tap payments.

Nevertheless, the whole Google Wallet service is still only available in the US, with no clear indication of when it will arrive in Europe. In contrast, Passbook has been available in Europe since its launch. Nevertheless, with the Android operating system being used on over 50% of current smartphone users’ phones, Google offer marketers access to a broader audience than Apple can. Therefore expect to see more retailers and brands incorporate Google’s mobile wallet technology in to their marketing plans in order to further create engagement and loyalty in their customer base, and ultimately increase sales.

There’s a clear distinction then that Google aim to incorporate their digital wallet as part of their wider plans of facilitating online payments for their users, whilst Apple’s Passbook is focused more on the non-payment side, solely being a place to store all the necessities of your wallet without making payments.

However with the launch of Apple Pay in October 2014, the in-store experience changed for retailers and consumers. Not only loyalty card are stored within mobile phones, the payment is made through NFC (Near Field Communication), a technology built-in iPhones. This means that the consumer only uses his smartphone to connect all services on the same mobile interaction. Adding the fact that Apple has already several major partnerships with major credit card services such as Visa, American Express, banks and retailers, this translates in a huge advantage for Apple.

The rise of mobile wallet marketing opportunity

In recent years, we have seen the rise of mobile payments and how they been changing the way customers and businesses interact. From PayPal, Google Wallet, Square, Isis and passing on to Visa and MasterCard, everyone has been focusing on driving mobile payments, improving and transforming the way people shop and pay.

Only more recently, have the mobile wallet non-payment features started to emerge. Primarily with the launch of Apple Passbook, and later with the new updated version of Google Wallet, mobile wallets have been redesigned to meet the needs of brands in delivering compelling content to consumers on their smartphones via the use of dynamic passes (such as digital coupons, loyalty cards, boarding passes, event tickets and others offers), push notifications and real time location based messages. Taking advantage of these features has become fundamental in the industry in allowing brands and retailers to communicate more effectively, while giving consumers an easier way to organize their items in one place.

This is a huge, and very real opportunity for brands and retailers to communicate and further build relationships with their customers. These new functionalities allows to easily send personalized offers, distribute passes which drive store traffic and increase both conversion rates and consumer loyalty and enabling a very cost-effective location-based marketing campaign.

At the end, brands and retailers can start exploring the emergence of mobile and social platforms as an opportunity to increase share of mind and share of wallet to create an interconnected and seamless experience between mobile and the shop floor.

Consumers have already made it clear they want a mobile wallet solution that gives them a seamless experience while helping to better organize all their shopping-related information, thus creating a better, more convenient overall shopping experience.

No longer do consumers need to carry all their paper coupons or plastic cards when shopping, traveling or going to an event. Instead, they can place their coupons, offers and cards in the mobile wallet and let the technology work for them. They can also be reminded of offers when close to a retail store or when a certain offer is about to end with a push notification that will appear on the screen of their smartphone.

Mobile is the ultimate and effective form of custom media because it is personalized and contextualized to the consumer. This is why it is important for marketers to create personalized and contextualized, relevant content based on their client profile. And if used properly, Google Wallet, Apple Passbook or other mobile wallets are effective solutions for brands to leverage customer acquisition, engage with consumers and drive traffic to their store. Nevertheless, these mobile wallets are not brand or retailers friendly in a way that is easy for the marketers to create offers or vouchers, design campaign and distribute them their target consumers.

Passworks is a new best in class solution for brands and retailers, that enables effective customer acquisition and strong engagement that drives store traffic. It’s an integrated solution for mobile marketing campaigns management using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or an Application Program Interface (API) to create engagement mobile wallet campaigns.

With Passworks’ marketers can design their dynamic passes (digital coupons, membership cards, loyalty cards, event tickets, travel tickets), create the respective marketing campaign, choose a profile target, define location-based notifications, and distribute them directly to customers´ phones of all major mobile platforms via Apple Passbook, Google Wallet, Windows Phone Wallet and other their parties Apps through integration with social networks among other channels.