Vivotech teams up with Tetherball and with Zapa Technology to offer mobile loyalty solutions to retailers

Vivotech is to offer Tetherball’s sticker-based mobile loyalty programme to its installed base of retailers and is supplying Irish start up Zapa with contactless stickers and POS equipment.

VIVOTECH: More than 550,000 contactless POS terminals installed around the world
VIVOTECH: More than 550,000 contactless POS terminals installed around the world

Vivotech has signed a collaborative alliance with Tetherball and has also revealed that it is the supplier of Zapa Technology‘s mobile loyalty system, currently in use in Ireland’s Insomnia coffee chain ahead of a planned Europe-wide rollout.

The collaboration deal between Vivotech and Tetherball will see the latter’s contactless sticker-based mobile loyalty technology being offered by Vivotech to its entire installed base of contactless card accepting merchants.

To date, 140,000 locations across the US have deployed more than 500,000 of Vivotech’s contactless POS terminals. A further 50,000 terminals have also been installed overseas and the new collaborative alliance between the two companies means that these retailers can all now add Tetherball’s loyalty solution without making any changes to their point-of-sale equipment.

Tetherball has been testing its mobile loyalty and marketing system at the Rochester, Indiana branch of the 5,700 strong International Dairy Queen fast food and desserts chain. The company recently reported redemption rates of up to 50% for its mobile coupons, compared to the standard 1% to 2% for online and paper coupons.

Consumers who sign up for Tetherball’s service are issued with an RFID tag that they affix to their mobile phone. The tag is activated by the customer by texting the ID number on the tag to a control centre. Then, each time they make a purchase at a participating retailer or food outlet, they are uniquely identified at either a contactless point-of-sale terminal or a dedicated kiosk so that they can gain or redeem loyalty points.

Tetherball’s back office system then also allows them to be sent targeted marketing and promotional offers based on their purchasing history, via either standard SMS text messages or via mobile coupons that are redeemable in-store.

“We are delighted to team with Vivotech, a clear market leader in contactless and mobile technologies, which will allow brands to rapidly deploy and scale our RFID based mobile loyalty programs,” says Jay Highley, president and COO of Tetherball. “Brands are looking to deploy a simple, easy-to-adopt mobile solution that allows them to build and measure their mobile loyalty programs — our RFID tag technology and patent pending Mobiquitous 2.0 reporting platform combined with Vivotech’s readers allows them to do both — and more!”

Vivotech has also announced that it is the supplier behind Zapa Technology’s contactless sticker-based mobile loyalty and gift card service. Zapa’s system enables consumers to use one Zapa Tag attached to their phone as their ID for multiple retail loyalty programmes, all hosted centrally on a Vivotech mLoyalty server managed by Zapa.

“Zapa has chosen Vivotech because of their experience in loyalty, contactless and mobile technologies,” says John Nagle, CEO of Zapa Technology. “Our goal is to provide exciting new services enabled through real-time and location-based loyalty programs using NFC technologies. With the ability to support multiple retailer programs in one Zapa Tag, we expect to have great adoption for our program.”

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