Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Stampt Aims to Take the Coffee Shop Punch Card Digital

Like many people, I can’t usually be bothered to remember those “Buy 10, get one free” cards, even for the shops I frequent.

So I was intrigued on Monday to spot a sign at Papalote, my favorite Mission District burrito shop. The sign advertised a new iPhone app called Stampt that allowed me to keep the punch card — digitally. After I placed my order, the clerk pulled out a QR code that I could scan, giving me one stamp toward a free burrito.

Papalote, it turns out, had just gotten their Stampt materials that day, and I was among the first customers. The iPhone app hit Apple’s store last Friday and the service is officially launching this week, I learned, after tracking down the company and its CEO, Brian Kelly.

Stampt has been quietly signing up merchants since mid-March, aiming to launch with several hundred, at least here in the Bay Area. The company has also signed up a smaller number of merchants in Chicago, New York and Cincinnati. (That last city is Kelly’s hometown.)

“The strategy has been to launch the app with a considerable amount of merchants signed up,” Kelly said.

Although Kelly has concentrated his limited resources on those markets (there are only six employees, including the summer interns), the company is accepting merchants anywhere in the U.S., and for some customers, having just one store that they frequent is reason enough to download and use the app.

“It’s easy enough and it’s rewarding enough,” Kelly said.

For the merchant, there is no charge for the basic loyalty card service. Over time, Stampt hopes to make its money offering premium customer analytics as well as by allowing merchants to craft special offers targeted at specific groups of users. Offers could be made, for example, to people within two miles who haven’t used their punch cards in the last two weeks.

Over time, Kelly said, his goal is to build up a base of millions of customers that could then be targeted by both major advertisers and local merchants.

“I want to build an audience of millions of frequent users,” he said.

Stampt is not alone in trying to offer a digital variant on the real-world loyalty card. Other start-ups in the arena include Key Ring and CardKing, though most of the others focus on literally digitizing an existing card, as opposed to working with the merchant to create an entirely electronic system. The company could also find itself butting heads with everyone from location-based companies like foursquare to daily deals sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial.

But even in its core service, Stampt is not alone. Another company, in fact, announced Tuesday that it has received $4.25 million in financing to take a similar service nationwide. Charlottesville, Va.-based Cardagin Networks is also looking to replace the punch card, and said it will use the new funding to launch in 90 cities this summer.

Stampt is self-funded, though Kelly said he wants to talk with venture capitalists now that the service is up and running. He’d rather pitch something that works, he said, than just some PowerPoint slides of an idea.

It’s iPhone-only for now, though the company has plans to expand to BlackBerry and Android.

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