The time has come for merchants to take consumer convenience and security to the next level, and mobile marketers may have found a way to make payment processes faster and more convenient for merchants and their customers.
Yowza, a mobile marketing brand by Spindle Inc., has launched a new and creative reseller program that gives merchants a way to send consumers digital coupons and offers to their smartphones. Yowza is also developing a payment mechanism that customers can use at the point of sale called the Yowza wallet. Spindle Inc. chief executive, Bill Clark, says the merchant will access a mobile POS system that activates a Quick Response code from the Yowza server to the consumer. The consumer then opens their Yowza wallet, selects the credit card they want to pay with, and then scans the QR code to process payment.
“The idea is for consumers to get a coupon and use their smartphone to make a purchase,” Clark tells Digital Transactions News. “We built an ecosystem to make that happen.”
Merchants can either pay $99 per month for platform and marketing technology licenses, or $59 for the platform and $49 for the platform when sold separately. Resellers can receive up to a $200 fee for each merchant they sign up for.
Not all mobile commerce services will require merchants to install new equipment. Loop, a mobile payment company in Boston, offers a service using magnetic induction to connect to a magnetic stripe reader. A consumer with a Loop wallet app can pay with a card by simply holding a Loop phone case or fob next to the magnetic stripe reader. This creates a magnetic induction field that prompts the stripe reader to send out the card number for authorization.
Henry Helgeson, chief executive of Merchant Warehouse, states that the best way to jumpstart a relationship between merchants and mobile companies is through independent sales organizations and acquirers. “The way to accelerate adoption is through the ISO, which can drop directly onto the merchant countertop,” Helgeson says, “There are two ways mobile commerce companies can get to merchants. One is to incorporate an ISO and acquirer sales channel, or through direct distribution. If you choose the direct distribution, it might be more difficult to reach merchants.”
If a mobile commerce organization goes through an ISO, they will avoid the expense and hassle of connecting their offers to an existing POS, since this relationship already exists between ISOs and acquirers.
Total Merchant Services (TMS) realized the value of going through an ISO when it created a tablet-based POS system with mobile offers called Groow. Groow was developed in-house and uses Fanminder, a mobile and social marketing tool that TMS designed. The tool is poised to help merchants grow their businesses by offering them a variety of commerce tools from a tablet POS system to a card reader for smartphones.
Merchants who want to grow their business can’t settle for traditional payment processes anymore.
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