Case Study on Pay By Touch Loyalty Program

Self Service World published a Case Study on Pay By Touch's Loyalty Program.

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Attack of the Cyber Terrorists

This story was posted on the Drudge Report and thought the effect this "hypothetical" situation would have on financial systems interesting. Specifically, the effect it would have on the online payments space. Imagine my surprise when I found out it happened last week in Estonia!

Naturally, I started to think how Pay By Touch's TrueMe combined with ATM Direct's patented Internet PIN Debit system could help avert a financial transaction disaster like this from occurring.

Attack of the cyber terrorists
the Daily Mail

Here's an excerpt:

"The disruption continues: thousands of popular websites, from eBay to YouTube, start malfunctioning or are replaced by malicious parodies.

Tens of millions of pounds are wiped off the share price of companies like Amazon as fears grow that the whole Internet credit card payment network is now vulnerable and insecure.

Eventually, reports start to flood in that hundreds of thousands of personal bank accounts have been raided overnight.

Panicked bank chiefs and PR men go on TV to try to reassure, promising that this is no more than an electronic glitch, but thousands of anxious citizens take to the streets, many in tears, and pour angrily into the banks to demand their savings in cash.

When the ATM system goes down, the government steps in. A task force is appointed. There is a rush on hard cash that leads to a shortage of notes and coins.

Soon, it is clear that the United Kingdom (and much of Europe) has been subjected to a sustained and effective cyber-terrorist attack.

Slowly, the computer network is disinfected; the viruses, botnets and worms that are the electronic versions of bombs and bullets are defused and rendered harmless. No one has died, but the attack has cost Britain $10 billion, and share prices take months to recover.

Such a scenario, say some experts, is not only possible but likely in the near future.

Look, for example, at what happened to Estonia last week. Ever since the government of the Baltic state decided (rather tactlessly it must be said) to remove a war memorial to the Red Army from a square in the capital, Tallinn, Russian outrage has ensued. This took the form of demonstrations and even riots.

But then something extraordinary happened: quickly, and wholly without warning, the whole country was subjected to a barrage of cyber-warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, banks and newspapers.

Techniques normally employed by cybercriminals, such as huge remotely-controlled networks of hijacked computers, were used to cripple vital public services.

Nato has sent its top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn, with western democracies caught on the hop over the implications of such an attack."...

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Pay By Touch Capturing Resources

ONE OF A KIND ... IN MILLVILLE:

Little-known local firm quietly finds success

MILLVILLE -- A data processing firm tucked away in a quiet corner of Millville Airport hosted a rare on-the-road meeting of the city's Industrial Commission last week.

Pay By Touch this year hits its five-year anniversary as a small but solid success story for local efforts to attract businesses to Millville.

"What I've seen in the last five years, driving from Vineland to Millville, is amazing," General Manager Marie Gittone told commission members last Monday. "Every time I drive down High Street, I see more companies arriving."
It previously was known as Capture Resource Inc., a privately owned firm based in Bristol, Pa., when it arrived in fall 2002 at the Millville Airport Industrial Park. Capture Resource took over a building at 1600 Malone St., previously leased to Prudential Financial.

Pay By Touch is actually what the operation has been known as only since December 2005.

Its business centered on high-volume mail processing, for clients such as grocery stores and financial institutions, document scanning and data capture. A major part of its business was, and is, collecting personal information for scannable "loyalty cards" that groceries and other retailers issue to customers.

The Millville facility was to serve as a second location and a backup to its Bristol base. Millville was picked over alternates in Hazleton, Pa., and Hagerstown, Md.

Its parent corporation since a 2005 buyout is Pay By Touch, a privately owned firm based in San Francisco.

Pay By Touch is a leader in the industry of collecting and applying human biometrics, including fingerprints, electronically to enable faster, easier and more secure bill payments.

For instance, three years ago it introduced a system to allow grocery shoppers to scan a fingerprint at a cashier's station to get product discounts rather than having to use a plastic "loyalty card."

Vice President Jeff Grider said Pay By Touch owns 60 patents dealing with different types of biometrics for processing payment and documents.

"There's no other U.S. company you will ever see that will use biometrics for payment and age authentication," he said.

Vice President Gary Smith said the decision to locate here came down to the responsiveness of Donald Ayres, the city's economic development director, and Christy DiLeonardo of the Cumberland County Employment Office. Smith said the supply of former Prudential employees was an important bonus because of his company's need for skilled clerical workers. The county screened the first batch of 15 to 20 workers for Capture Resource, a role it continues to play.

Grider said the business now has 60 employees and two shifts.

Pay By Touch handles about 50 of the country's largest grocery chains and earlier this month landed the nation's largest supermarket chain, he said.

He declined to identify the chain, except to say that it operates about 2,400 stores.

Editors Note: Kroger operates 2481 stores and WAS the nation's largest grocery retailer for years until Wal*Mart knocked them out of the number 1 spot this year. (by $4 billion dollars)

"Business is good and business is growing," Grider said.

PBT Ad Agency Wins 52 Clio's

Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide Named 'Agency Network of the Year' at Clio Ad Festival

Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide was awarded "Agency Network of the Year" at the 48th International Clio Awards, winning a total of 52 statues. Saatchi & Saatchi New York won the prestigious Grand Clio award for its 42 Below Vodka print campaign and was named "Agency of the Year."

"The challenge to the various Clio Juries is to recognize the best ideas executed to a higher standard," said Tony Gulisano, managing director, Clio Awards. "The work awarded this year to Saatchi New York as well as eight other Saatchi agencies worldwide, is representative of that accomplishment. We congratulate their impressive performance this year." "This is the 48th Clio Festival and we've ended up with 52 statues. In 4 years time this would be the perfect headline," said Saatchi & Saatchi's Worldwide Creative Director Bob Isherwood.

Saatchi & Saatchi New York's Chief Creative Officer Tony Granger added: "The Clio "Agency of the Year" honor is very humbling. We are simply thrilled." The Saatchi network won a total of 52 awards, including 1 Grand Clio; 8 Golds; 13 Silvers and 30 Bronze. The work spanned across the following categories: TV/Cinema; Interactive; Integrated; and Print.

Saatchi & Saatchi's flagship New York office, which will be handling the Pay By Touch Account, had a phenomenal showing, bringing home a Grand Clio for 42 Below and a total of 32 statues.

According to Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, Bridget de Socio, who is responsible for the development of the look and style and flair of Saatchi's JCPenney work. "has also worked up a whole new name and look for our biometrics client Pay by Touch."

Bridget's approach is nothing less than challenging, but her innate ability to bring Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy to life makes the process worthwhile. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what they come up with.

According to Clios, there were 19,300 entries this year. 10% made Shortlist -- less than 3% went on to win an award and less than 1% were bestowed with a coveted Gold. The Festival was held in Miami Beach from May 9-12th.

About Clios The Clio Awards are the world's most recognized international advertising awards competition. Founded in 1959 to celebrate creative excellence and innovation in advertising, the Clios inspire and pay tribute to one of the most interesting and influential art forms in modern culture. Known for its world-class juries made up of 113 experts from 62 countries, the Clio Awards focus on creative work in the fields of advertising and design, specifically in the areas of TV, Print, Outdoor, Radio, Content & Contact, Integrated Campaign, Innovative Media, Interactive, Design and student work.

About Saatchi & Saatchi With 153 offices and nearly 7000 employees, Saatchi & Saatchi is the 9th largest global agency network in the world. Part of the Publicis Groupe, the fourth largest communications holding company, Saatchi was recently awarded the Wendy's and JCPenney businesses. It handles over 40 #1 brands in its client portfolio, including: Tide, Pampers and Olay (Procter & Gamble); Pillsbury and Cheerios (General Mills); Excedrin, Theraflu and Triaminic (Novartis); BASF; Ameriprise; Pay By Touch; and Reynolds Wrap.

The agency represents clients with combined annual revenues of approximately $500 billion and market capitalization of approximately $650 billion. Saatchi & Saatchi is known for its exceptional strength at creating the emotional connections between consumers and products. This approach comes to life through Lovemarks, the methodology created to create "loyalty beyond reason" and "inspirational consumers."

Pay By Touch Strengthens SmartShop Program

To facilitate rapid consumer adoption and give merchants maximum flexibility, Pay By Touch has added a card-based option to its biometric SmartShop(TM) service.

SmartShop, powered by Pay By Touch, gives shoppers customized offers on the products they buy most when they enter the store -- before they shop.

Pay By Touch, the leader in biometric payment and personalized marketing, is offering card-based SmartShop in addition to the biometric SmartShop service, which launched at NRF in January, 2007.

SmartShop provides merchants and consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) with an unprecedented return on investment (ROI) by enabling them to deliver the right offer to the right shopper at the right time - both in-store and online.

"At Pay By Touch, we understand that each retailer is unique. Card-based SmartShop enables merchants to immediately engage their best shoppers by letting them use their existing loyalty cards to get personalized offers," said John Rogers, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Pay By Touch. "SmartShop offers unparalleled, automated targeting based on preferences in each particular store. There is no better way for merchants and manufacturers to reach their targets."

Research shows that 70 percent of buying decisions are made in-store, and that less than one percent of grocery store coupons are ever redeemed(1). As a result, millions of marketing dollars are wasted every year. SmartShop turns every shopper into a uniquely qualified marketing lead and delivers value to consumers, merchants and manufacturers alike.

SmartShop enhances retailers' existing loyalty programs by delivering added value to their most important customers. It also provides a robust loyalty solution for retailers who do not yet have a program in place. Best of all, SmartShop 'learns' from each shopping trip to generate the next set of relevant rewards.

Card-based SmartShop at Shop 'n Save and Foodtown Stores.

Card-based SmartShop has been implemented by Shop 'n Save stores in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, as well as Foodtown stores in New York and New Jersey.

These merchants will migrate to biometric SmartShop, and adopt Pay By Touch's biometric payment solution, to let shoppers identify themselves, pay for purchases and redeem rewards with the simple touch of a finger.

"We are extremely pleased with the SmartShop service, which is branded 'Shop 'n Save Personalized Perks' in three of our Pittsburgh-area stores," said Greg Hartley, Owner of three Shop 'n Save locations. "The service is a huge hit with our shoppers, with kiosks in each store receiving more than 300 visits a day. We are excited to continue using the program and we are looking forward to seeing the kiosk in other Shop 'n Save stores."

Early results reveal the value of the SmartShop service. These merchants can experience:

* Twenty to 50 percent shopper adoption of SmartShop
* Eight to 12 percent sales lift among customers using SmartShop
* A 25 to 30 percent reduction in advertising and direct mail printing and distribution costs

SC Johnson Among Early CPG Adopters

Already, several leading CPGs have joined the program, including SC Johnson and more.

These companies are leveraging the SmartShop platform to deliver personalized, highly relevant coupons and deepen their relationships with consumers.

With SmartShop, CPGs can experience:

* Twenty percent+ sales lift
* Four to five times greater redemption rates than traditional FSIs
* Twenty to 50 percent reduction in marketing costs per unit sold at retail
* A significant reduction in handling costs

How SmartShop Works:

1. When shoppers enter the store, they simply scan their loyalty card at the SmartShop kiosk to get personalized offers based on their purchase history.

2. Shoppers receive an 8 1/2 x 11 print-out with 16 customized offers on the products they buy most, and then head into the aisles to shop.

3. Shoppers scan their loyalty card at check-out to redeem their offers. They do not need to bring the print-out to check-out; no paper coupons are required.

SmartShop gives merchants customer-based metrics and accurate data that improves the efficacy of marketing efforts. It is easy to implement, with a Web-based management system for algorithmic campaign creation and real-time targeting. The service provides robust analytics to make reporting and account settlement both easy and accurate.

Availability: The card-based version of SmartShop, powered by Pay By Touch, is available now. For sales inquiries, call Sarah Cole at (415) 371- 5620 or email her at : sarah.cole@paybytouch.com

You mad,(could have .Ed) See SmartShop at FMI: An interactive demo of the SmartShop service will be available at the Pay By Touch booth, #411 at The New FMI Show plus MARKETECHNICS(R), May 6-8, 2007 at McCormick Place in Chicago, IL

Self-Service is Good Service

TECHNOLOGY: Groundbreakers
These grocers are among the ones that just get it -- and they're helping pull the industry into retail technology's new age.

The past 12 months saw early adopters bringing entire new classes of technology to bear on food retailing, by making real headway with initiatives such as tying loyalty programs to a consumer's fingerprint, effective marketing to mobile phones, and offering contactless card payment to shoppers on the run.

These pioneering grocers have moved the industry a step closer to the ideal of a fully tech-enabled market, equipped with accurate knowledge of what consumers want, and the ability to efficiently deliver it to them.

Here they are:

Loyalty with a finger

One of grocers' biggest gripes about loyalty programs is that the data most programs generate isn't very reliable or actionable. Shoppers forget to bring their cards for every trip, and/or borrow someone else's, and the integrity of the data is then compromised

Pretty soon all the intelligence that an expensive loyalty program has gathered is useless. This leads grocers to misapply the programs.

"Quite frankly, we've been hard-pressed to find retailers that are doing the customer loyalty program with specific customer successes," says Greg Buzek, president of Franklin, Tenn.-based retail technology consulting firm IHL Consulting. "Most retailers use the loyalty card as a discount card only to identify certain brands, rather than to target specific individuals. Instead of targeting specific offers to specific customers, the system is set up to target certain products to the masses, at a discount."

But now some retailers can take technology that has been relied on for years to identify crooks, and tie that to their loyalty systems so that they can reliably link a transaction to one person -- and one person alone.

In January Green Hills, an independent one-store operator based near Syracuse, N.Y., launched its Pay By Touch SmartShop service, in which biometric technologies teamed with Green Hills' marketing services to provide a loyalty program that's directly linked to individual customers. SmartShop gives shoppers customized offers on the products they buy most when they enter the store -- before they shop.

"The SmartShop service has been extremely popular, and shopper participation is already impacting 50 percent of store revenue," says Gary Hawkins, c.e.o., Hawkins Strategic and proprietor of Green Hills. "We have seen offer redemption rates exceeding 20 percent, and SmartShop is driving a significant increase in revenue."

A new self-awareness

Wegmans' decision last month to close its 20-year-old in-store video rental departments to make way for Redbox video kiosks shows just how far self-service technology has come. Letting shoppers serve themselves is now being recognized by some operators as a new form of valuable service. They've come to realize that self-service systems, including self-checkout units, kiosks for dispensing information and taking orders, and DVD vending machines, can complement even the most service-oriented operation.

The technology may not be new, but the way some retailers view it today certainly is.

Newport Avenue Market, an upscale supermarket in Bend, Ore., is well known for delivering excellent customer service. As such, owner Rudy Dory only reluctantly considered installing a self-checkout system. He ultimately decided it was a competitive necessity, since most of the retailers in his trade area already had such systems.

Still, Dory feared he might be going against his store's roots, and that shoppers might agree. "I thought my shoppers would view it as a reduction in service levels," he recalls.

Sometimes, guessing wrong isn't a bad thing. After Dory installed the Fujitsu U-Scan self-checkout system, he saw customer acceptance and usage take off immediately. Most shoppers were happy to choose self-checkout for a five- to 10-item basket.

"We saw about 20 percent of our total transactions through self-checkout during the first month, and it quickly escalated to 35 percent by the second month," says Dory. "And we've continued to average right around 35 percent since then."

"Self-service is good customer service," agrees Ray Carlin, c.e.o. of StoreNext, which markets the self-checkout system Dory installed, as part of a suite of solutions aimed at independent grocers.

According to IHL, stores with self-checkout systems see from 25 percent to 40 percent of transactions, and 15 percent to 25 percent of the total dollar volume gravitates to those systems. In a recent IHL Consulting Group/RIS News survey of retailers, The Consumer-driven Store, 60 percent of respondents said they were planning to purchase self-checkout systems by this June.

Self-checkout is sharing the DIY revolution with information kiosks, as consumers seek to learn more about their purchases. Originally designed to deliver health and drug information -- as with the now widespread Healthnotes kiosks often tied to in-store pharmacies -- these freestanding units are popping up elsewhere in the store, serving as founts of information about products in almost every department.

Supervalu's Farm Fresh Stores division, for example, employs information kiosks in the produce departments to make nutritional data and recipe suggestions for fruits and vegetables easily available.