Apparel Group Loyalty Program “Club Apparel” was launched few days ago in Dubai in cooperation with Imovation. Club Apparel is the first Mobile Loyalty Program in UAE and it’s based on globally patented Margento technology.
It enables local as well as international shoppers benefit from using their personal mobile phones to identify themselves at affiliated points of sale. Collecting and redeeming of points is done through a simple phone call. All transactions are quick and take very little effort, while still guaranteeing a high degree of security.

275 Apparel stores are part of the Club Apparel scheme and equipped with the Margento POS terminals. After successful launch, Apparel Club will role out to the group’s other stores across the Middle East.

Netherlands company Margento maintains a mobile transaction service based on what it call “Data-over-Voice”, which essentially works the same as the French solution above – your phone transmits data via sound, which is read and decoded by a scanner at the point of sale. It has announced it is entering into a 50-50 joint venture with the services branch of multinational company Bertelsmann, Arvato Services. Margento and Arvato will be using the Data-over-Voice system for loyalty/coupon redemption, payments for products and services, balance top-up, mobile tickets, and electronic gift vouchers.

Via GoMo News

Starbucks is testing a mobile payment system in Seattle and Silicon Valley.
Starbucks Card Mobile app allows users to add money to their card account from the app using a credit card, and then use it to pay for Starbucks products by swiping a 2-D barcode on the screen.

Just enter your Starbucks Card number and your iPhone ‘becomes’ your Starbucks Card.
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arvato services, the services arm of Bertelsmann’s arvato division, and Margento B.V., a technology company from the Netherlands, today announced the formation of a joint venture. The JV, headquartered in Munich, will offer customers comprehensive transaction and payment services via the mobile phone.

Margento will bring its proven transaction platform to the 50-50 joint venture, as well as its patented Data-Over-Voice (DOV) technology, while arvato services will invest in the JV and contribute its extensive expertise in Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Finance services.

“We are excited about opening up the German market for mobile transaction services with arvato as our partner,” said Margento CEO Gregor Breznik. arvato services’ managing director Mario Schwegler added: “The JV’s balanced mix of expertise in services and technology forms an outstanding basis for a nationwide implementation of mobile loyalty and payment services in Germany.”

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Making mobile payments has been touted as the easiest, most convenient way to make payments. Using a mobile phone, money can be sent to pay a variety of bills with just the click of a few buttons. It’s supposed to be much like sending payments from your home PC, but it can be done from anywhere you happen to be. Making mobile payments is easy and it is convenient, but it’s certainly not a safe way to send money.

Most cell phone transactions are simply not being sent with the kind of encryption that will keep their users’ data safe. Many of the access points being used to send wireless payments are completely unencrypted. About a quarter of them use no encryption while many of the remaining access points are using poor encryption methods that leave customers’ data vulnerable. Vulnerable data means a loss of crucial financial information that can then be used by anyone who has it.

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Five Secrets for Effective Loyalty Marketing – one way retailers are hoping to get customers back into their stores, is by offering all sorts of rewards programs and in-store bonuses to their most loyal customers

Compared to the expense required to attract new customers with advertisements or sales, loyalty programs like these are an inexpensive way to keep existing customers coming back and the money flowing in.

Although the average household has a dozen loyalty memberships, almost half of all consumers carry just one or two store membership cards with them, according to Consumer Reports. Knowing how hard it is to become the one card that shoppers carry religiously, retailers are offering bigger and bigger incentives – sometimes too big for a loyalty program to remain profitable.

Margento answers the above and many other challenges with fundamentally simple approach: forget cards – use mobile phones.

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Gartner predicts the number of mobile payment users worldwide will hit 73.4 million by 2009 and 190 million by 2012. This represents a tremendous percentage of total cell phone users (Gartner estimates upwards of 3% of the total user base) and companies must consider this technology as a potential payment channel comparable with checks, cash and electronic funds transfers.

Retailers First Adopters of Mobile Payments

The benefits of mobile payment solutions for retailers are obvious. The ability to accept credit card payments or mobile payments on a wireless device such as a smartphone enables retailers to create a host of new, innovative and engaging retail platforms. “Pop-Up Retail,” a term coined by Trendwatching.com, is a temporary retail space designed to quickly draw in crowds in high traffic areas then disappear once buzz wanes. Think fairs, concerts and other outdoor venues with massive crowd attendance. Because these events have limited time durations the expense of creating a permanent retail space (and the infrastructure to support it like phone and internet lines) is prohibitive.

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Margento Mobile Coupons is is flexible mobile couponing solution, enabling both pull and push coupons distribution methods, various easy and fast coupon program enrolment scenarios and convenient coupon redemption.

Mobile coupons are coupons in a digital format, not paper, and created, distributed, redeemed and tracked via Margento System and people using their mobile phones.

Because of mobile phones ubiquity and the fact that they are almost always by a person’s side, by default, mobile coupons are available at pretty much anyplace and anytime.

Margento is well aligned with short- and long-term trends in the coupons industry:

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