Hot from Vancouver is a start-up that is set to change the payments industry with a new type of mobile payment solution. PayWith Inc.’s mCard revolutionizes how merchants and shoppers interact; the just-launched Smartphone app simply and securely enables in-store transactions with mobile devices, enticing customers to pay with their smartphone every time they transact with local merchants. If you are a merchant with a consumer audience, the company promises to “turn that audience into revenue,” as boldly declared on their website.
PayWith has signed a North American license agreement with MasterCard that allows PayWith to provide merchants and consumers with a highly secure and convenient Smartphone-based payment, loyalty rewards, and commission sales solution. In doing so, it is set to change the way we shop in terms of the loyalty and rewards, gift card and credit card industries. It will also likely change digital marketing as we know it.
The company, of just seven employees, was founded in May 2011. Over the last two years, PayWith has created a new technology platform and developed the revolutionary mCard. Led by CEO David Strebinger and a consortium of leading businessmen and entrepreneurs, PayWith has invested over $10 million to bring this mobile payments solution to market. mCards are one-time use, pre-paid vouchers that consumers can redeem at specified merchant locations. They can be created by merchants for their customers, by organizations for their members, by groups or marketing agencies for their followers, and even by individuals for their friends and family. The creator of the mCard can track the purchases, amount spent, frequency, visits, marketing message and communications involved that led to the in-store or online consumer transaction.
“The mCard is a really simple way for shoppers to securely purchase goods and services using nothing more than their phone. Merchants who sign up to use this PayWith technology will be able to offer a convenient and secure mobile payment platform and open a new door to marketing directly to their customers – with no new hardware or software required,” says Strebinger.
With this license agreement, millions of merchants in North America who are able to process credit cards can choose to accept mCards and engage with their customers on a whole new level using the PayWith platform. PayWith’s suite of services includes mobile payment, loyalty rewards programs, customer acquisition campaigns, mobile gift cards, a range of social media marketing, fundraising for non-profits and associations, as well as customer tracking and analytics for merchants.
Benefits for consumers:
1. It is simple. The introduction of the mCard will help transform how consumers shop by making the “mobile wallet” a reality, available to anyone with a smartphone.
2. The perks: you save every time you pay, can give feedback, earn rewards and send gifts to friends. Even if you forget your wallet.
3. All payments are (obviously) secure. PayWith does not share data relating to the consumer’s purchase of an mCard with any third party.
Benefits for merchants:
1. PayWith solves the problem of mass merchant adoption of mobile-based payment and loyalty rewards solutions, removing barriers to entry. Merchants do not need new hardware or software, nor will they experience added fees, expenses and training required to participate. Using PayWith, merchants do not have any technical, financial or security-related barriers to overcome.
2. PayWith allows for new mobile marketing processes by offering simple ways for merchants to run rewards and loyalty campaigns and to sell branded gift cards without any new hardware or software.
3. When customers pay with branded mCards using their mobile phones, merchants receive relevant customer data and analytics that help drive sales.
4. PayWith is focused on merchant profitability and quantifiable exposure, with a “Pay Per Result” marketing system that tracks the ROI of every marketing campaign.
As mobile technology continues to shape the shopping experience, prevalence of the payments industry is set to increase dramatically. In North America, the mobile payments industry is projected by Forrester to be a multi-trillion dollar industry in less than three years, and Canada is primed for payment transformation like no other country in the world with the highest existing per capita use of mobile payment technology. With 80 per cent of Canadians now owning a smartphone (and 100 per cent of all young professionals), PayWith estimates 90 per cent will be able to engage in mobile payments by 2016.
Check it out for yourself here.
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