Fresh off its strong March IPO, digital coupon provider Coupons.com is revealing its next consumer product: card-linked offers. Now, shoppers will be able to add coupons directly to their payment cards, whether those are Visa, MasterCard or American Express cards, then automatically receive savings at checkout. At launch, the service will focus on offering coupons for speciality retailers and restaurants, including Gap, Old Navy, The Body Shop, Tilly’s, Travelocity and others.
Card-linked offers are discounts received after initially registering your payment card with a given service. You add the offers to your card – in Coupons.com’s case, via its website or mobile apps for iOS and Android – then, after completing the purchase at point-of-sale, the savings are directly credited to your bank or credit card.
A number of competitors also work in this space including Cartera Commerce, Cardlytics, Womply, edo Interactive, and others.
Coupons.com’s new service, CardLink IQ (or CLiQ), has been built using technology the company acquired from its acquisition of Yub late last year for $30 million.
Merchants who sign up to participate don’t need to switch their point-of-sale systems or train staff on new procedures for coupon acceptance, because there’s no change in the checkout process – consumers just swipe their card as usual. But on the merchants’ side, they’re then able to track their digital marketing spend to purchases in real time, using the provided reporting tools.
Shoppers can get started with Coupons.com’s card-linked offers by signing up from the new “Card Linked Offers” tab on the website, or via the mobile app. After linking card or cards – a one time process – users are able to browse various discounts and click to add them to your card. When making a purchase at one of the supported retailers or restaurants, users receive either text or email notification confirming acceptance of the coupon.
The cash discounts are credited directly to your card, and settled within a few days. If the offer is for a gift card reward, those redemption codes are sent within a few minutes.
At launch, a handful of businesses have signed up for the service, including Gap and Old Navy, who are both offering 6 percent cash back when spending over $50 at a store; Denny’s, which is giving $5.00 off purchases of $10.00 or more; The Body Shop, which is offering $5 and free shipping when spending $50 online; and Travelocity, which is offering $20 off purchases of $200.
Browsing the site, a number of other retailers are spotted, too, including Vitamin World, Banana Republic, Piperlime, Athlea, DressBarn, Perfumania, and more.
While Coupons.com’s system is one focused on consumer convenience, it may appeal to those same sorts of shoppers who once were scouting for local deals at brick-and-mortars using services like Groupon and Living Social, for example. The move comes at a time when the daily deal market has been in decline, with some companies seeing falling revenues, poor forecasts, layoffs, pivots and other signs of trouble. (Groupon has had some success following expansion into new categories).
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