Visa teams with shopkick for mobile purchase rewards

With the Black Friday shopping frenzy looming, Visa is partnering with mobile retail solutions provider shopkick to offer cardholders rewards points at the point of sale.

The shopkick solution awards rewards points called "kickbucks" to smartphone users who enter traditional brick-and-mortar stores, scan consumer goods and make purchases. Consumers can redeem kickbucks to claim gift cards, movie tickets and iTunes downloads. Visa will team with shopkick for a new program called "Buy and Collect," offering kickbucks when shoppers use their Visa credit or debit card at participating retailers including Toys "R" Us, Old Navy, Wet Seal, American Eagle, Simon Malls and Arden B.

Visa senior business leader Leigh Amaro tells The New York Times the Buy and Collect promotion enables the financial services giant to track consumer shopping behavior as it occurs, offering insight into whether marketing efforts are successful and supporting real-time deals. "We believe that the combination of walk-in rewards and purchase rewards is the killer combination," added shopkick co-founder and CEO Cyriac Roeding.

The shopkick app now boasts more than 2.5 million active users across the U.S. More than 4,000 individual stores across multiple retailers as well as 250 malls have fully deployed the shopkick solution--in addition, consumers can earn smaller rewards by interacting with products from brand partners like Kraft Foods, Clorox, Procter & Gamble, Intel and HP.

Visa plans to launch its Near Field Communications-enabled V.me digital wallet platform in August or September of 2012, allowing consumers to make real-world and online purchases via smartphone. Visa (along with rivals MasterCard, Discover and American Express) also has confirmed it will join Isis, the nationwide mobile commerce joint venture spearheaded by Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ), AT&T (NYSE:T) and T-Mobile USA. Last week, the company launched a Visa Developer Center website touting tools to accelerate the creation of payment-enabled applications.

For more:
- read this New York Times article
- read this TechCrunch article

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