What is the role Izicap plays within the payment industry?
Izicap provides a unique combination of technology with marketing expertise, that is not available normally in the payment industry. Izicap transforms consumers’ bank cards into loyalty cards, and existing payment terminals into customer relationship management tools.
We provide benefits to three major stakeholders:
– Acquirers: enriching their product portfolio, generating additional revenue streams, increasing card transactions and increasing,oyalty of their customers to their network
– Merchants: Providing customized marketing advice, providing access to data and insights about their businesses, providing a loyalty platform and campaign management system. We make available to small and medium merchants marketing tools that are normally only available to large scale retailers.
– Cardholders: Letting them have access to merchant loyalty programs without needing additional cards or apps – they just need to use their regular payment card
When or what happened that lead to the “Ah Ha” (moment of realization) that translated into the inception of Izicap?
It was a gradual process, combining several insights and experiences.
We started from the needs of the stakehloders (Acquirers, Merchants and Cardholders) and evolved the concept until we reached the current configuration that is already being used in two countries.
The original vision we had was about how can we really help small merchants to leverage their payment data in effective way. The solution was to come up with an all in one approach, combining technology and marketing consultancy with an affordable price.
The concept will still continue to evolve, always having a merchant centric view
What is Card Link technology?
It allows to implement loyalty schemes in a very convenient way for cardholders and for merchants by eliminating any loyalty cards or app and using the payment card instead.
When a transaction is made, the data relative to that transaction is processed to feed an analytics big data platform and at the same time to is sent to the loyalty engine that will determine what rewards or messages shall be sent to the loyalty program members.
This means that there is much value on the transaction, beyond the actual amounts that are transferred and this can be exploited, within total compliance to local and global regulations and standards, to the benefit of the acquirers, merchants and cardholders.
What is the largest benefit of using a service like Izicap instead of using a loyalty card?
For the Cardholder, it is the ease of use – no loyalty cards or apps to manage. Even if the client forgets his loyalty card, no wasted time searching his name, everything is done automatically through the bank card.
For the merchant it provides insights into its business, ability to relate with its customers in a powerful, data driven way to increase their loyalty. More sales! More profit!
No marketing skills required, no time spent in the management of his program, a tailored loyalty program created by professionals.
We have seen sales increase of 30-70% for the merchants who used the Izicap solution.
How do you see Izicap evolving over the next 5 years?
We intend to grow rapidly, based on the proven success cases we have built since 2013 (deals completed with banks in France, notably one of Crédit Agricole’s regional banks, with Markadis, an acquirer in the UK, and with Ingenico for an industrial partnership deal).
Market research shows that there are about 20 million Merchants that could benefit from our technology and business model.
We will establish partnerships with more companies in different geographies to capture a fair share of this huge market.
We are looking towards the US and Brazilian markets due to their size and nature of players