Page 32 - Pay Magazine

digital money
Igniting Payments Change
“We know if you can get customers active in the mobile application, they stay longer,” says Walt Gran- ville, senior vice president of mobile innovation, Digiliti Money.
“We have numbers showing it’s double or triple the average lifetime of a non-mobile app user. I don’t know that it’s unique to us, but it speaks to the power of
having an engaged customer and giving them what they want.”
With its November 2016 launch of enhancements to its Select Mobile
soCial CoMMerCe: GiftinG Gone Wild
E-gift cards are still a small portion of the overall gifting market and the perception can be—as it used to be with plastic gift cards—that they make an impersonal gift.
But the latest e-gifting survey from Black- hawk Network suggests recipients like to receive e-gifts more than gift givers believe.
in a June 2016 survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, respondents said that a common reason they don’t purchase an e-gift to give as a gift is because they feel it
can be perceived as impersonal. however, respondents who have received e-gift cards feel the opposite. Of the consumers surveyed who have received at least one
e-gift in the past 12 months, 93 percent said they were satis ed to receive an e-gift and 85 percent felt that it was a personal gesture and selected just for him or her.
For Smartgift co-Founder and cEO monika Kochhar, spurring adoption of e-gifts is about making digital gifting smart by using technology to improve the experience for the giver and recipient, while driving meaningful metrics for retailers. the company’s SKU-level gifting platform enables givers to select an item, while recipients choose the appropriate size and color, or a similarly priced item, before anything is shipped.
Smartgift is part of mastercard and Silicon Valley Bank’s commerce innovated accelerator program, and it was there that Kochhar had her ah-ha moment. “We decided to delay payment until after a recipient has selected her gift, so the core of the experience is on gifting,” she says.
its gift Now, Pay Later technology, which is integrated directly into a retailer’s existing online and mobile checkout process, boosts conversion rates by more than 65 percent. What’s more, the average redemption time for the recipient is under 3 minutes and 30 seconds, which Kochhar attributes to the mobile- rst platform.
here’s how it works. a shopper clicks on Smartgift on
a participating retailer’s Website and picks something out for the recipient. the sender sends a gift link by text, Whatsapp, chat or email. the recipient digitally unwraps the gift (see image) and chooses her product preferences or swaps it for a different, similarly priced item. the gift giver pays once the recipient has selected the gift.
“We offer a frictionless path to purchase,” says Kochhar. “Smartgift satis es gift givers and recipients through an over-the-top giving experience and merchants through an easy-to-adopt platform.”
in addition to improving the gifting experience for givers and recipients, Kochhar says Smartgift provides gifting and consumer behavior-related data that can help retailers improve strategy and boost customer acquisition.
“consumers respond to simpler, faster and more personal experiences,” says Reetika grewal, head of payments strategy and solutions at Silicon Valley Bank. “Smartgift approaches the age-old gifting challenge from this lens. the psychology of gifting is inherently complex and they have solved for the big pain points by developing a product that is well-positioned to take advantage of next-gen commerce.”
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