DEMO: MoLo Rewards lets you redeem coupons with your phone at the checkout counter
Mobile electronic coupons have had a long and sorry history. Some companies have made progress with Bluetooth marketing, where you can can beam coupons to people who have their Bluetooth receivers turned on in their cell phones.
But MoLo Rewards is introducing at DEMOfall 09 a solution that makes it a lot easier to redeem coupons. It has built a system that uses the “near field communication radio frequency identification” technology that is being built into cell phones and checkout stands around the world. These radios have a very short range and are only activated when you put them near another radio they can couple with, perhaps an inch away. Other companies are using the near-field technology as a way to pay for goods from a mobile phone electronic wallet.
MoLo is piggybacking on the near field payment technology to let you swipe your mobile phone over the checkout scanner, which has to have a special near field communications signal reader. As you do so, MoLo calculates all of the coupons in your electronic wallet that you can apply toward the purchase of your goods. The process takes a few seconds.
There are over 50,000 retail locations currently using the near field communication payment technology including Jack In The Box, AMC movies, Best Buy and Home Depot.
The Sanford, Fla.-based company is funded by its founders.
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About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.