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Wake up and swipe the coffee (#pensions folk)

henry tapper

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This reaches me on twitter

Mobile, along with social and local, will be one of the largest drivers for Groupon’s deals business over the next few years.


Groupon VP Mobile Partnerships Michael Shim said: “Mobile is huge for Groupon…I believe we could see us doing 50 percent of deals sold/purchased in the next couple of years.”

The opening morning keynote was delivered by K.C. MacLaren, Starbucks’ director of mobile and emerging platforms. MacLaren said the coffee retailer is the largest mobile payments company, with 8,000 outlets. In January, it rolled out an iPhone app nationwide that allows people to scan their phone to pay for a drink.

MacLaren said so far usage of the application has exceeded expectations, with millions of users. Three months after the app launched, the company revealedthat more than three million people had paid using Starbucks Card Mobile.

Right now the application isn’t about incremental revenue, he said, but about driving loyalty. Shim talked about a new service launched last Tuesday called Groupon Now, which allows users in the Chicago area to make a timely purchase decision on when and where they want to eat lunch or dinner–or maybe even go see a movie.

Shim said the service has also exceeded expectations, with more than 1,000 merchants already signed up to offer real-time deals. “We’ve been inundated with demand. Groupon Now is about local discovery. What can I find around me?…We are just getting going on where we think it will take our business.”

The communication of pensions is no longer communicating against junk mail, e-mail and for webtime. If pensions wants to get a place on the roster of what everyday folk think about, it needs to be planning now for how everyday folk (not cybergeeks) organise their lives.

On the Pension Play Pen this week, Lydia Ofori asks the question “thinking very deeply, how many of us have a barcode app loaded on our phones?” I thought she was joking but having read her comment and those of others I admit I was wrong.

My son uses barcode apps and taught me over the weekend. It’s time we woke up and swiped our coffee – literally and metaphorically.

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