Startup news: The International Business Times details the impending launch of a new smart phone-based loyalty platform designed to aggregate digital offers and reward customers with cash-back earning for shopping, downloading apps, viewing videos, and sharing offers with their friends. Sounds like a myriad other merchant-funded platforms on the market - except that Sh8pe, the London, UK-based startup, has global reach with representation in 196 countries around the world.
The Sh8pe platform dates to 2014, when a group of Australian, American, and French entrepreneurs began the design and launch of the product, which is now in beta with a scheduled global launch date of April 15 as the self-proclaimed "Uber of ecommerce" (Uber should get a commission every time a company claims to be the "Uber of X"). The platform aggregrates and curates over 100,000 digital offers from familiar brands around the world, and then rewards members ("Power Affiliates" in Sh8pe parlance) for accessing those offers through two consumer-focused platforms:
MobPower: MobPower allows members to earn cash and rewards for performing specific actions like shopping online, filling out surveys, downloading mobile apps, watching videos and more. Members can then earn additional rewards by referring members and then earning a portion of their spend - sort of a smart phone-enabled multi-level marketing scheme. Members earn 25 percent commisions on their own consumption and an additional five percent lifetime commission on referals' spend. MobPower also rewards additional loyalty points during monthly promotions that top affiliates can redeem for cash and other prizes.
Sh8pe rewards: Sh8pe Rewards is a gamified, crowd-sourced loyalty program that allows members to pool activity and share in rewards on a monthly basis, with higher-ranking members earning more rewards.
Again, nothing unusual in that Sh8pe is a standard merchant-funded online shoppping portal, in this case enabled via smart phone. What makes the platform noteworthy is its sheer scale: 196 countries participating and over 100,000 offers from nearly every brand you can think of. If you haven't seen Sh8pe in your market yet, it appears that you soon will. Best of luck to the company for the launch.