Boston, MA 05/20/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) decided to expand the in-store payments venture with the assistance from a new service which enables the merchants in identifying customers that hold the coupons of the company and at the same time allow them to pay for their purchase by making use of iPad Mini. The in-store payments venture will be expanded with the help of the service called Gnome.
What does Gnome do?
Gnome (read genome) allows the local businesses to process the coupons without having a need of digital or printed voucher. It also enables these businesses to get customisation of marketing campaigns for the vendors as well as accept credit-card payments. Gnome allows the merchants also to redeem these coupons by making use of Bluetooth.
How will this function?
The merchants are supposed to pay Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) a very small monthly fee as well as the transaction charge. Groupon, as an introductory offer, allowed over a month long free trial in five different cities. The benefit was that Groupon was approached by 98-99% businesses who decided that they wanted to adopt this system.
Benefit to Groupon
This action will enable Groupon to offer a very strong competition to hardware and software makers of in-store payments. These include companies as Salesforce.com Inc, Micros Systems Inc and VeriFone Systems Inc. This is said to be a very crucial move by the company, which at present only undertakes niche payments system known as Breadcrumb and that too for only high-end restaurants.
Statement by the Groupon Chief Executive Officer
Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN)’s Chief Executive Officer, Eric Lefkofsky, explained that each and every merchant ready to work with this new service will get a Gnome tablet. The CEO also added that this programme will soon be started in all the markets of the U.S. in 2014 itself. Eric Lefkofsky further said that the company believed that with the help of this new service every business will be able to get the power to track their venture and pull in the right customer for their business at precise moment.
