Mobeam and Clutch launch mobile wallet that beams barcodes to laser scanners

Source: Mobeam

Today, Mobeam™ and Clutch released the latest mobile wallet enabled with Mobeam's patented beaming technology.

This new feature lets consumers use Mobeam's technology to beam barcodes from their loyalty, membership, and gift cards directly from their smartphone to any laser scanner. The beaming feature is available exclusively on two of the world's most popular phones, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3. In the past month, Mobeam's beaming technology has driven close to 2 million shopping trips on over 25 million devices.

"The mobile shopping experience needs to be easy, simple and convenient for our customers," said Andy O'Dell, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Clutch. "Now that our Clutch app is enabled with Mobeam's beaming technology, consumers will be able to use gift cards, loyalty cards and coupons - anything that has a barcode - at the checkout line, right from their smartphone. Now consumers won't have to worry whether or not their merchant will be able to scan a card stored in Clutch, greatly enhancing the convenience of a mobile wallet and saving valuable time at the checkout."

Clutch eliminates the need for multiple apps, enabling consumers to manage gift and loyalty cards, daily deals, coupons, offer searches, purchases, shopping comparisons, social gifting and mobile payments all in one place. Clutch currently supports hundreds of leading brands and merchants and aggregates more than 100,000 deals, offers and rebates daily.

"Mobeam is excited to be working with Clutch to help customers save time and money by simplifying their overall shopping experience," said Mobeam COO, Marcia Donner. "Shoppers using Clutch will now be able to use their phones to easily redeem coupons, gift cards, membership cards, and more at any store. Barcodes are universal and with Mobeam, retailers don't need to upgrade their existing POS systems to make barcodes mobile."

Mobeam's beaming technology, embedded in the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3, solves the key problem that has limited the progress of mobile commerce: widely deployed retail laser scanners are unable to scan a barcode presented on a smartphone screen. Mobeam converts barcodes into beams of light that can be read by the tens of millions of laser scanners in use today by retailers worldwide. Samsung has said retailers prefer traditional barcodes, because they do not have to install any new infrastructure.

Jim Cramer host of CNBC's Mad Money recently said, "Mobeam is changing the way we spend money. That's what's key. It brings us one step closer to a future where you literally use your phone for everything."

According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce is expected to reach $31 billion by 2016, growing at a 39 percent annual compound rate. This significant growth is shifting the $100 billion physical gift card market towards mobile. In fact, more than half of retailers (61 percent) plan to use mobile gift cards and 43 percent of customers prefer to use the mobile medium for gift cards, according to Transaction Wireless and Aberdeen.

Capitalizing on this market opportunity, the Clutch app, enabled with Mobeam technology simplifies mobile shopping for consumers while exploiting a lucrative niche within the growing $484 billion pre-paid retail gift card, loyalty and cash replacement card markets (source: Mercator Advisory Group). Unlike the point solutions available today, Clutch and Mobeam eliminates the need for both physical cards and multiple apps for storing data. Its proprietary recommendation engine stimulates consumer spending by offering relevant deals to each user based on their personal, time and location data, while strengthening brand relationships by capturing valuable information and leveraging targeted marketing opportunities.

The Clutch platform integrates shopping, gifting and loyalty solutions with users' real-time location, preference and friend data. This empowers merchants to provide relevant and timely information to customers to help them get better offers and give better gifts. Merchants benefit from a direct-to-consumer marketing channel informed by rich data across retailers, gift lists created by the app user and their friends, past responses to offers and geo-location information. Additionally, because of Clutch's registration process, gift card buyers and recipients are no longer anonymous, allowing brands to identify and engage more of their customers. And with Mobeam's beaming technology, customers are able to use the Clutch app at any checkout scanner anywhere in the country.

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