To differentiate their service offering, Zapa has introduced ZAPA TAG, an NFC ‘sticker’ placed inside or outside the mobile phone, which collects loyalty points or holds stored value. Consumers need only wave an enabled phone across the ZAPA terminal, located at participating retailers’ points of sale (POS), to redeem an offer, access a service, or collect loyalty points. Postilion will allow Zapa to centrally manage all loyalty points and contactless transactions and provide detailed reports that are ideal for usage analysis. With Postilion, Zapa will also be able to add new payment services as retailers diversify from prepaid top-up into other offerings, such as gift cards, and lottery ticket purchases.
Zapa is launching its services by seeding POS infrastructure to strategic retailers and providing their customers with ZAPA TAGs. By initially focusing on the Irish market, Zapa aims to ignite consumer demand, turning the desire for contactless convenience into tangible business value for retailers. By doing so, it will position Ireland as an early adopter of contactless and NFC, setting a positive example for the rest of Europe.
The Zapa system will be available as a white-label service to retailers in Ireland, the UK, and continental Europe, providing them with a fast and cost-effective alternative to in-house contactless payments development. Zapa anticipates that loyalty applications will drive the initial push, with an emphasis on creating a universal system to support multiple retailers. In this scenario, a single ZAPA TAG would access separate branded wallets on the customer’s mobile display, showing loyalty points accrued from each retailer.
“We chose Postilion because we wanted to clearly differentiate Zapa as a European payments innovator,” explains John Nagle, CEO of Zapa Technology. “Contactless is still a relatively new concept for most retailers so it was important to provide them with the assurance that it is powered by Postilion’s high performing, secure payments platform.”
Nagle adds, “Postilion offers us one of the most flexible infrastructures available, enabling us to add new payment services quickly and easily. This will ensure that we can support the future demands of our retail customers, whether they adopt standalone or integrated POS systems. Postilion also offers superior reporting that delivers the type of customer intelligence that will help our retailers evolve customized services to target, attract, and retain consumers. Features such as online and mobile alerts to advertise in-store promotions, mobile-based incentives to encourage foot traffic, and interactive customer loyalty programs tailored to individual consumer spending patterns, provide additional benefits for retailers using Zapa payments services.”
“We are delighted to be involved with such an innovative company like Zapa," states Francois van Schoor, President of Postilion Payments. “Pioneering applications such as these, that build on our solution’s inherent flexibility, modular approach, and high level of security, have made us successful with global retailers. We look forward to helping Zapa achieve its strategic business goals and successfully delivering these new services to retailers in Ireland and beyond.”
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