How Plink and Wisely Are Angling for Rewards Revenue

Mobile payments are the rage — but 90% of commerce still takes place offline.

Two online services powering offline commerce are rewards company Plink and Wisely, a new Yelp-like service built on actual transaction data.

Plink
Plink offers card-linked rewards at brands such as Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Staples, Dollar General, Foot Locker and Red Robin. Users register cards at Plink.com and can choose offers they want pushed to them. Users then pay with the cards offline and the rewards are carried through to their accounts. Users can also use Plink Points across the network of Plink merchants to get cash and prizes.

“We’re driving about $1 million a month in offline sales for our biggest brands,” Plink CEO Peter Vogel told Bank Innovation. “The conversion rate for offers has doubled in the last 18 months.”

Vogel said Plink can power a 100% increase in sales for brands even from existing customers.

Card-linked offers are becoming a more familiar product to customers, especially given programs like Bank of America’s BankAmeriDeals, which was featured in a national TV spot. Merchants are also catching onto the value of these offers to boost sales, Vogel says.

“We’re seeing that brands now budgets allocated to offers,” Vogel said. “Money is being reallocated from TV advertising to card-linked offers. We’re able to get in the door with brands that would not talk to us a year ago.”

The card-linked industry saw$3 billion to $3.5 billion in offers purchased in 2013, Vogel said. He expects to see 50% to 75% growth to as much as $5 billion in 2014.

The largest players in the space, Cardlytics, which runs BankAmeriDeals, and Edo Interactive, have played a strong role in pushing knowledge about card-linked offers. One advantage smaller players such as Plink enjoy in signing new customers is that large brands can employ more than one card-linked program. Therefore, a major retailer with a Cardlytics program could be receptive to a pitch from Plink.

“Big brands view different offer programs as different channels,” Vogel said.

Plink’s differentiator, Vogel said, is the rich data it provides, $6 billion in transactions in its data warehouse, including, possibly, data on a brand’s competitors. Plink’s users are based primarily in large cities, and are 55% female. The most common age range of users is 25 to 35 years old.

“We’re still more web-based now,” Vogel said, “but by the end of 2014 our customers will be more mobile, both in usage and acquisitions.”

Wisely
Formerly known as Glyph, Wisely is a recommendation engine for stores and restaurants based on actual transaction of American Express cards and store loyalty cards. More data will be included soon — Wisely expects Bank of American and JPMorgan Chase data by early February.

Wisely’s iPhone app launched three weeks ago — a week ahead of schedule, thanks to the vagaries of the App Store. An Android app will be in the wild by the New Year, Wisely CEO Mike Vichich said.

Wisely is not yet seeking funding. Instead, the company will spend six months deepening user engagement on its platform and then begin scaleable customer acquisition.

Glyph, Wisely’s previous incarnation, helped users maximize rewards with cards. Wisely still does that, but the service also functions to tell users how much the average user paid at that fancy new restaurant or boutique, and will continue to accrue data and offer it to users in order to improve their experience “before, during and after shopping.”

Vichich has lofty goals for Wisely. He wants the company to “democratize payments,” he told Bank Innovation. “Wisely can provide a map of the economy by keeping tab on spending,” he said. He envisions the app as having strong appeal for travelers.

Wisely’s data also appeals to merchants.

“Merchants will be able to see where they are losing sales and gaining sales and why customers are or are not loyal,” Vichich said.

Much of Wisely’s programming muscle goes into data cleansing. This is a perennial problem for the industry looking to help consumers understand purchases. Why are the data strings put out by merchants to hard for humans to read? “The POS (point-of-sale) is not optimized for data,” Vichich said dryly.

POS systems not providing meaningful data is also a problem for mobile solutions such as Loop and Card that rely on the magstripe reader. The magstripe reader provides no data and, therefore, little incremental value to merchants outside of loyalty and rewards programs. This is where Plink and Wisely are making their living now, and when systems advance with smartcards or other innovations, they will still be relevant, and will have mountains of data beneath them.

Both apps are free to download.