Mercury Payment Systems, LLC, a provider of payment technology and services for small to mid-sized businesses, have announced the launch of Mercury StoreCard, a gift, rewards, mobile payments and promotions card all in one.
Consumers can use the Mercury StoreCard as a gift card or a reloadable stored-value card to earn cash back loyalty rewards on every StoreCard purchase. The Mercury StoreCard can also be converted into a digital gift card via Apple Passbook or an Android marketplace app, allowing consumers to pay for purchases with either their physical card or smartphones, creating mobile payment convenience. Consumers can also use their smartphones to view their Mercury StoreCard’s balances, manually or automatically reload their cards, send custom-printed gift cards to their family and friends, and share promotional gift cards via social media.
“With Mercury StoreCard, we’re making gift card and rewards programs simple for the consumer to use and simple for the merchant to manage,” said Travis Priest, vice president of value added services for Mercury. “With smartphones becoming a global phenomenon, merchants find it compelling to integrate mobile payments to connect with the digital consumer. Mercury StoreCard gives them the mobility they are looking for while tying it to services like rewards programs and prepaid services that create stickier customer relationships.”
Removing Barriers to Help Compete with Big Box Stores
For the merchant, Mercury StoreCard addresses a technology gap in the marketplace. Smaller merchants want the marketing power of a big box store, but typically lack the budget and technical expertise to carry out a complicated customer loyalty program. Integration with their existing point-of-sale (POS) system and checkout process remains challenging and creates barriers to entry for most small businesses.
Mercury StoreCard helps remove those barriers by working seamlessly with the merchant’s existing POS system, and payments made with a Mercury StoreCard are processed like any other gift card transaction. This removes much of the effort and complexity that so often accompanies a merchant’s adoption of a new payment technology.
Growing Demand for Mobile, Gift, and Rewards Solutions
Mercury StoreCard was inspired by the increasing demand for mobile, gift, and rewards payment solutions. Prepaid was the fastest-growing payment type in the U.S. over five years from 2007 to 2012, according to a May 2013 Nilson Report. Concurrently, mobile wallets are becoming increasingly popular among both consumers and merchants. Worldwide mobile payment transaction values surpassed $171.5 billion in 2012, a 61.9 percent increase from 2011, according to Gartner Research. Mercury StoreCard is launching at the intersection of these growth trends, and making each of these technologies more accessible to the broader small to mid-sized merchant market.
