After hitting $11 million in mobile payments volume per day, Square is announcing more news—an update to the startup’s flagship iOS and Android payments apps. As you may know, Square Card Reader and companion app transforms any iPad, iPhone or Android phone into a full point of sale system.
One of the major additions to version 2.2 of the app relates to customer loyalty. Now merchants can reward their regular customers with a new in-app loyalty feature that allows merchants to recognize their most frequent customers when they enter their store. The new feature also allows merchants to offer repeat customers discounts, which the customer will see reflected in their Square Card Case.
As we’ve written in the past Square Card Case is a mobile app that consumers fill with ‘cards’ of all the merchants they visit and buy from who accept Square. These mobile cards include locations, merchant contact info, coupons, order and purchase history and more.
On the consumer side, Square has invested heavily in loyalty. Via the Card Case app, once Square’s technology detects you are near a merchant enabled store, the Merchant’s Square app will open a tab for the customer and show that customer’s account, name and photo as nearby. When the customer purchases an item, they say their name, and the cashier can verify the photo matches the customer and press the transact button and the charge will go through. The customer will get a push notification with the amount of the charge as well.
Now, Square enables merchants to define a ‘regular’ (for example, 10 visits over the past month) and they can opt-in to make this a default setting that will automatically reward the frequent customer. Whenever a ‘regular customer’ comes into an establishment, the merchant will see ‘regular’ on the screen and a discount will be provided within the payments system.
Read the full article here.