Fintech Innovator Creates Brand New Category of Payment-based Offers, or SKUPay™, to Virtually End Coupon and Promotional Offer Fraud, Misredemption, Settlement Delays and Marketing Uncertainty. Powering Anywhere, Anytime Offers.
St. Petersburg, Florida (Sept. 14, 2021)—SKUx, an innovative fintech company redefining the way consumer offers are delivered, redeemed, settled and reported, today announced a game-changing new fintech category of payment-based offers, called SKUPay™. SKUPay is designed to replace today’s archaic world and process of coupons, rebates, promotional offers, and settlement, freeing up billions of dollars in savings for consumers and solving long-term industry challenges for retailers, consumer brands, and marketing agencies.
Powered by the SKUx platform, SKUPay transforms virtually any coupon, rebate, or promotional offer into an easy-to-use, serialized, single-use offer. They can be delivered through virtually any channel of engagement and monitored and managed in near real-time to optimize campaign results and control costs. Because each offer powered by SKUx is serialized, fully trackable and redeemable only once, it eliminates fraud and misredemption. The system uniquely enables daily settlements for retailers without the need for a lengthy and costly coupon clearinghouse process.
“SKUPay offers are currency, not IOUs like coupons,” said Jim Sampey, SKUx Co-Founder and CEO. “They can be spent only once and solve long-time industry problems with process inefficiency, fraud, and misredemption. These challenges are often only exacerbated by today’s digital coupons and cost brands and retailers billions of dollars. It’s time to put that money to better use providing shoppers with greater savings and satisfaction in the products they buy.”
“SKUx empowers consumer brands and retailers to better serve and delight their customers. SKUPay is an intuitive, consumer-preferred solution that makes saving money easier than ever before. It provides unprecedented omnichannel reach and delivers timely and actionable campaign data to optimize engagement and drive increased revenue and sales,” Sampey said. “SKUx makes every offer better.”
SKUPay will further propel explosive growth within the mobile payment industry. The National Retail Federation and Forrester conducted a midyear 2020 survey showing broad acceptance of no-touch payments, which had increased to 69 percent of retailers. The U.S. is now the world’s second-largest market for mobile payments with $465.1 billion worth of transactions in 2020 and volume expected to grow to $698 billion in 2023.
The “Powered by SKUx™” Difference:
SKUx and payment-based offers reinvent and simplify the world of consumer offers to bring unparalleled consumer engagement, trust, transparency, immediacy and control to consumer brands, marketers and retailers. Key advantages include:
- Powers virtually any channel of consumer engagement — anywhere you choose to deliver your incentive, from store shelves, email, social media, mobile, on-pack, display media, and more.
- Eliminates fraud and misredemption — replaces coupons, rebates, and promotional offers with trusted single-use, serialized offers that can be targeted down to the product SKU or UPC and automatically redeemed and processed without time-consuming and often inaccurate checkout clerk approvals.
- Daily processing and settlement — retailers can be reimbursed daily, not in weeks or months.
- Unparalleled and immediate data visibility and control — marketers can optimize campaign results and stay within predetermined budgets.
- Intuitive and easy to use — SKUPay is redeemable wherever mobile payments are accepted.
Deb Henretta, a former top executive at Procter & Gamble who held numerous senior leadership positions, including President of P&G Global e-Business, said the SKUPay category is a major leap forward for the industry. “Digital coupons just haven’t solved many of the major challenges that retailers and consumer products companies like Procter & Gamble have grappled with for decades. Coupon fraud, costly settlement processes and a lack of trust, transparency and visibility continue to plague us, said Henretta, an advisor to SKUx. “SKUx and payment-based offers address those challenges in a way our current system can never do.”
The SKUx Smart Incentives™ platform is already being used by leading consumer brands and retailers. In addition, SKUx is continuing to build a major partner ecosystem to further scale and enhance the value of its solution. The company recently announced a partnership with Blackhawk Network, a leader in advanced payment solutions with prepaid products, technologies and network that connect brands and people. Other partnerships are coming.
How it works
Brands, retailers and marketing service providers can quickly create campaigns utilizing digital SKUPay offers that run through the patent-pending SKUx Smart Incentives™ platform, where they are normalized, serialized, and given an individualized SKUx IDs for tracking. These offers reside in the SKUx platform and can be made readily available through virtually any channel of engagement.
Upon check-out, the serialized offer is redeemed and the SKUx platform is updated, giving partners real-time access to redemption information. Settlement occurs on a daily basis when the SKUx sends settlement amounts to balance the transaction.
About SKUx
A leading fintech innovator, SKUx gives brands and retailers the power to deliver secure, intuitive digital offers anywhere, anytime, at the speed of today’s consumer. SKUx transforms virtually any coupon, rebate, or promotional offer into payment-based offers for the world’s leading retailers, brands, and marketing agencies. The company’s patent-pending Smart Incentives™ platform as a service combines offer details, serialization, funding, and settlement to increase customer loyalty and create new opportunities for consumer engagement. The result – new incremental revenue, improved efficiency, and laser sharp transparency for all industry stakeholders. For more information, visit www.skux.io.
