Zapa to seed NFC stickers and terminals to ‘strategic retailers’

More details of the services to be offered by the Irish start-up, which secured €2.5m in funding earlier this month, have now been revealed.

PAYMENTS: Zapa's retail marketing and loyalty system will expand to include a payments element
PAYMENTS: Zapa's retail marketing and loyalty system will expand to include a payments element

Zapa Technology has chosen Postilion to provide the core payments platform for its NFC sticker-based retail marketing and payments system and has revealed further details of the type of service it plans to offer.

Similar in concept to the Tetherball solution being tested by Dairy Queen in the US, Zapa’s technology will allow consumers to attach a Zapa Tag to their phone and then use it to participate in multiple retail loyalty and other programmes such as prepaid payments, mobile gift cards and promotions. The system will be provided to retailers in Ireland, the UK and Europe as a white-label service “providing them with a fast and cost-effective alternative to in-house contactless payments development.”

Each Zapa Tag will be able to work with several separately branded wallets on the customer’s mobile phone display, showing loyalty points accrued from each participating retailer.

Retailers will need to install a dedicated Zapa terminal at the point-of-sale, with which customers can redeem an offer, access a service or collect loyalty points. In the future, though, there are plans for them to have the option of integrating Zapa technology into their existing POS technology.

To get the new system off the ground Zapa is to invest in seeding ‘strategic retailers’ in Ireland with terminals and will also provide their customers with Zapa Tags. “By initially focusing on the Irish market Zapa aims to ignite consumer demand, turning the desire for contactless convenience into tangible business value for retailers,” says the official announcement. “By doing so, it will position Ireland as an early adopter of contactless and NFC, setting a positive example for the rest of Europe.”

Features to be offered from launch include online and mobile alerts to advertise in-store promotions, mobile-based incentives to encourage foot traffic and interactive customer loyalty programmes tailored to individual consumer spending patterns.

“Contactless is still a relatively new concept for most retailers so it was important to provide them with the assurance that it is powered by Postilion’s high performing, secure payments platform,” says John Nagle, CEO at Zapa Technology.

“Postilion offers us one of the most flexible infrastructures available, enabling us to add new payment services quickly and easily,” he added. “This will ensure that we can support the future demands of our retail customers, whether they adopt standalone or integrated POS systems. Postilion also offers superior reporting that delivers the type of customer intelligence that will help our retailers evolve customized services to target, attract, and retain consumers.”

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