How many store gift cards do you have in a drawer and never used? In fact, they just go out of date. Most retailers estimate that about 20% are never redeemed, leaving a nice little profit on prepaid cards. Looks like that game is over.....
(I blogged about better mobile payments yesterday - so if you're interested, it's the next blog below this one).
Because you can store your gift cards on your phone, it means that you can empty those plastic cards from your drawers and better still, this will warn you as they're about to expire.....Or indeed, to check your balance.They already have about 200 retailers on board but this is a very clever idea that tech was made for. It solves a problem.
Gyft is about bring the plastic card business to mobile by way of an App.
Mobile is of course, ideal for anything associated with shopping. SnipSnap, a mobile coupon-sharing App and Belly, a loyalty card start-up, are also integrating with Apple's Passbook. SnipSnap for example, allows you to store coupons so when you visit a shop, you can see if you have any coupons for that shop on your phone. You have? use them.
Similarly with Belly, you always have your loyalty card to hand and according to Techcrunch, has been downloaded over 500,000 times. So you're in the store and you always collect your points.
The video above, will show you how to incorporate printed coupons into Passbook. But these are great ideas showing how mobile and apps can solve very simple problems,simply.
Again.
