Wildfire Systems and Badge are linking 50,000-plus merchants to Apple, Google and Samsung wallets, so cashback offers and store alerts may soon show up there.
Your phone's wallet app may soon do more than hold your cards. Two companies, Wildfire Systems and Badge, are partnering to put store cashback offers inside Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. They announced the deal at the Money20/20 USA event in Las Vegas.
Wildfire runs a rewards network of more than 50,000 merchants. Best Buy, Macy's and Ulta Beauty are among them. Badge makes technology that lets businesses add custom features to mobile wallets. Linked together, the two let merchants and rewards programs extend their offers to payment tools shoppers already use. That covers online purchases and purchases in physical stores.
A shopper adds a rewards pass to their phone wallet. The pass then shows personalized cashback and savings offers from merchants in Wildfire's network. It updates on its own as deals change. Other pieces of the system include:
Wildfire's platform handles the tracking behind the scenes. Merchants and rewards program operators do not need to build their own system for wallet offers.
For shoppers, the pitch is convenience. Deals sit in the same place as the cards you already use. The tradeoff is more alerts, including ones tied to where you are. Wildfire CEO Jordan Glazier said the goal is meeting customers "where they are" to find and use offers.
The announcement as reported does not give a launch date. It also does not say which rewards programs will offer these passes first, or what controls shoppers will get over alerts and location reminders. Wildfire's clients include Visa, Citi and RBC, but the material does not say which will use the wallet feature. When a pass does appear, check which notifications and location settings you allow.
Store deals and location alerts may soon arrive in your phone wallet, so check which notifications and location settings you allow when a pass appears.
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