Help with card swiping technology

Citytocity

Hi guys, long time reader, first time poster.

I'm taking on a business venture and while I know everything about the business side of things. I'm a bit lost when it comes to the tech side.

What I'm doing is providing discount cards to people. The cards can be used at bars, restaurants and retIl stores.

What I want to know is is there some sort of way I can set things up so that when the customer swipes their card, I would receive all the data throughout the year. This making it possible to see where people are doing most of their shopping. This will enable me to give them individual offers so that it benefits them.

I've no idea wether I would have to buy and place a swipe machine in each business or what it would cost

Thanks

GarIT

If you want business help hire a consultant.

Citytocity

GarIT wrote: »

If you want business help hire a consultant.

As I said before I've got the business side of it covered. Just asking a question about the technology involved. Thanks for trolling though

GarIT

Citytocity wrote: »

As I said before I've got the business side of it covered. Just asking a question about the technology involved. Thanks for trolling though

To ask questions about the technology you hire a technology consultant. Unless you are a charity you might not get help here.

Accusing posters of being trolls for posting an opinion you don't like generally doesn't help your cause.

yoyo

Please leave the moderation to the mods. Please use the report post feature if you think a poster is trolling.

Graham

Citytocity wrote: »

I've no idea wether I would have to buy and place a swipe machine in each business or what it would cost.

You haven't really given anything like enough information for anyone to give you any specifics.

Unless you have a system that can connect to a retailers existing EPOS systems (of which there are many varieties), then yes you are likely to need to put in your own scanning/swiping hardware.

What sort of date are you trying to gather? Frequency of visits? Spend? Items purchased?

If you're thinking of tracking spend or items purchased, how is that information going to be gathered recorded? How is the spend/item detail getting from the EPOS systems to your systems?

Assuming you do place your own hardware, how are you going to connect it back to your own IT systems? Dial-up line/WiFi connection, are you providing this connectivity or are you hoping the retailer will be able to provide it?

You're talking about entering a market that is already serviced fairly well and that you appear to know very little about.

If you set aside a 6 figure sum for the technology side that should be enough for you to get a decent trial up and running.

CreepingDeath

Citytocity wrote: »

I'm taking on a business venture and while I know everything about the business side of things...

That's some statement to make.

The likes of Mastercard and Visa could do this with their existing debit/credit cards and infrastructure very easily, immediately overtaking you with little or no effort. Mastercard already has a Mastercard loyalty points scheme where you earn points and can redeem them from various retailers, I've got a few free crates of wine out of them so far

They could let their existing customers optionally sign up for more offers.
No extra cost to them, while you would have to build up a huge infrastructure and marketing campaign to convince people to carry yet another loyalty card, one that existing retailers with their own loyalty cards might object to and not accept.
So I'm not sure if you would survive a "Dragons Den" session.

And without knowing how much a customer spends (integration into the credit/debit card) system or every retailers POS system, a potential advertiser wouldn't know who bought a €1 packet of sweets or spent €1000 on luxury items... so it would be very poorly targeted marketing information.

You admit that you haven't a clue about technology but have already made a very important and limiting technology decision, the use of a "card".

Even if you dropped the "card swipe idea" and used customers smart phones to scan in some retailer specific barcode/QR code/Quikly code, retailers already have something similar where they have QR codes to like their Facebook page and post offers through that.

If the system isn't easy to use, people won't use it.
I barely bother with a Tesco loyalty card, it's just another delay at the checkout.

There are other companies who can print retailer specific Visa pre-paids cards, as gift cards for companies, but I had trouble with one of them recently as I think they had some issues with security.

So I don't think you fully know what you want, how to get retailers AND customers to adopt it very easily and how to demonstrate that it's more effective than the retailers own marketing strategies.

Citytocity

I don't think I explained it very well but it's a niche market so I don't have to worry about being over run. I'd rather not say anything else so as to give away the idea. Thanks for your help anyway