Mobile World Congress: NFC Couponing Coming to a Retailer Near You

A collaborative effort between Oberthur Technologies and Ingenico have combined the technology of NFC and couponing to allow retailers the ease of passing on savings without key fobs, plastic cards and other coupon paraphernalia.

What this means for customers is doing without the hassle of remembering to clip coupons or if you put your deal card in your wallet. For retailers, it means creating a better customer experience with metrics that work.

According to the news release out of Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) this week, subscribers will be able to leverage Ingenico’s large installed base of NFC embedded terminals across all geographies, managing loyalty triggering and coupons recognition.

“OT is delighted to add yet another application to its flagship dragonFly NFC SIM card. This couponing service, in line with the GSMA (News - Alert) proposal, comes on top of numerous payment, transport, physical and logical access control, digital security and biometrics applications,” said Cédric Collomb, Managing Director of the Telecom Business Unit at the time of the press annoucement. “Offering such a service is in concordance with the positioning of the company: Mobility. Thanks to this service, end-users have all their coupons and loyalty cards stored on their mobile phones; they can use them where and when they want.”

The benefits of mobile coupons for the business are very clear. There’s very little cost involved and it’s far less expensive to send out electronic deals with a mobile couponing than printing thousands of coupons, mailing them or printing them with an advertisement.

NFC provides for businesses a unique opportunity to entice the technology savvy customer of today. It offers for more efficient and timely customer service.  Reporting on the data the users are providing will instantaneously allow businesses to track and view results of various campaigns in real time.  When a customer checks into an establishment, redeems a coupon and purchases the discounted product or service, the business will immediately know the path and trend for that customer.

Over time, technologies such as NFC and “mobile wallets” will continue to progress and act as prominent payment methodologies in our daily lives. 

It offers unique benefits to retailers, including long-term revenue opportunities, an increase in sales as well as faster transaction speed and lower costs due to contactless technology.