At the end of 2012, LevelUp had 500,000 users. By March 2013, that number was up to one million. LevelUp has made multiple adjustments to respond to this growing demand, including a number of upgrades to its system, and the introduction of white-label apps.
When the mobile payments system was first introduced, merchants accepted LevelUp payments via a smartphone held on a special LevelUp dock. These docks are now slowly being replaced with standalone devices with QR code scanners that integrate directly into the merchant’s POS system. LevelUp has been developing partnerships that enable the mobile payments solution to integrate directly into POS systems, such as Aloha, Micros, POSitouch, and Revel Systems.
From PaymentsSource:
“About six months ago we were integrated with 30% of [point of sale] systems, and now we’re at 70%, so we’re making quick progress,” says John Valentine, vice president of sales at SCVNGR’s LevelUp. “We won’t stop until we’re at 100% percent.”
LevelUp is also targeting larger merchants by offering white-label apps that can be customized to include an individual merchant’s branding while still operating on the LevelUp system. For example, Sweetgreen, an organic salad shop that has been using a white-label app since February, now has one in five customers paying with LevelUp.
“If you’re a brand you want to control the experience,” Valentine says. “The first day [sweetgreen] had hundreds of transactions and a huge buzz going about the rewards app.”
While the mobile wallets that set out to be as universal as plastic payment cards are struggling, LevelUp started out small, developed a core of both merchant and consumer users, and is now quickly expanding its market share beyond that group. Whether the small company can continue to outpace the industry giants is uncertain, but it has certainly proved itself able thus far.
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