The Atlanta-based company’s mobile app tries to be a resource to consumers who are looking for local merchants and events, sort of like the Web’s original CitySearch service from years ago — except that it’s on mobile. The app also distributes coupons to restaurants, but instead of charging consumers for the deals, like Groupon does, they are free, and merchants pay a flat rate to Scoutmob each time one is redeemed.

Investors in the company’s second round include AOL Ventures, New Atlantic Ventures, Capital Broadcasting, Cox Enterprises and Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer. To date, Scoutmob has raised $5 million, which means that even if it wanted to, it doesn’t have the resources to go up against Groupon and LivingSocial.

In an interview, Scoutmob co-founder Michael Tavani said the company gets lumped into the daily deals category, but said that from day one, “we tried to differentiate ourselves and to be more of a mobile company.”

So far, the strategy has worked.

The app, which is available free on iOS, BlackBerry and Android, has 1.2 million users who have redeemed one million offers. To date, the company has launched in 10 cities, with varying success rates. Some markets, like Seattle, don’t have many deals yet, while other cities, like Atlanta or Washington, D.C., are used more.

Because of its emphasis on mobile, the company was also able to to score a partnership with payment processing company First Data Corporation.

“It’s crazy, we are a two-and-a-half year-old company, and every week we have the largest payment companies in the world contacting us,” Tavani said. ”They are worried that if they don’t have mobile engagement, then what do they have?”

First Data processes about 55 percent of all transactions in the U.S., and will help Scoutmob close the loop of offering a discount, making a purchase and earning loyalty points.

The new funding will be used to support the company’s next wave of product development, which will include building out a mobile rewards program with the help of First Data and other payment companies it signs up.

Tavani said it will work like this: When users make a purchase at a Scoutmob location using a credit card, they’ll accrue points automatically. Once enough points have been accumulated, they can be redeemed at any Scoutmob retail location.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs, which require consumers to go to the same coffee shop 10 times in order to earn a free coffee, Scoutmob will let consumers earn and redeem points by visiting any merchant in its network. It’s similar to frequent flyer programs, where miles can be earned at a variety of merchants and then redeemed at a handful of airlines.

“We want to be the equivalent of an airline reward program, but for local,” Tavani said. “That’s exactly what we want to be.”

Scoutmob has landed in a sector spanning local businesses and mobile payments, which is ripe from innovation and extremely crowded by well-funded start-ups and massively large incumbents. But Tavani argues that it’s a level playing field.

“There’s going to be multiple players and lots of winners,” he said. “Groupon and LivingSocial are two with a gigantic lead. But we can go out and visit merchants today — there’s no one preventing us from having those conversations.”

American Express and Zynga are rolling out a rewards program today that will allow players to earn virtual currency when they spend money in the real world.

FarmVille fans willing to jump through a number of hoops, including signing up for a Zynga-branded prepaid card from American Express, will earn in-game currency, similarly to how consumers earn free airline miles for every dollar spent on an airline-issued credit card.

The rewards program will first roll out in Zynga’s FarmVille game and then will expand to CityVille, CastleVille and other titles over time.

The partnership is smart for American Express since it is working hard to promote Serve, its alternative payment service that is targeting a wider demographic that goes beyond its core business user.

“It opens up tremendous opportunities to address segments of the market that we weren’t able to address with traditional credit or charge products, including the youth or underserved markets,” said Dan Schulman, American Express’s President of Enterprise Growth.

By partnering with Zynga, American Express will be able to pitch the card to a lot of new users.

The two companies started implementing the program five days ago, by offering FarmVille players the chance to visit a Serve-branded farm, where they can earn a virtual tiger. In less than a week, Schulman reports that already 500,000 people have “liked” Serve and have received the tiger.

While FarmVille is one of Zynga’s older properties, it is still one of its most popular, attracting 4.5 million unique users a day.

As I said earlier, it takes a number of steps to sign up.

First, FarmVille fans who visit the Serve farm will be prompted to plant a virtual Serve Money Tree on their farm. Then, they can register to receive a Zynga Serve co-branded prepaid card in the mail. Next, they’ll have to link the card to a bank account, debit card, credit card or cash using a GreenDot MoneyPak.

Only when all the steps are completed will they then be able to use the Serve card anywhere American Express is accepted.

Initially, American Express will reward a consumer’s first five purchases of $25 or more, but over time it expects to expand the program.

Starting later this year, Schulman said the Zynga Serve Rewards program will be able to link to deals inside of the game that can be redeemed in person. For instance, Starbucks could award consumers who have planted coffee crops a chance to redeem a coupon inside the store. Because the offer is linked to the Serve card, the discount will be redeemed automatically and consumers won’t have to remember to print out the coupon.

“It’s a closed loop for Zynga players,” Schulman said. “It’s so very different than what anyone else has done.”

Zynga’s CMO Jeff Karp said the program is not replacing the company’s current rewards program, but rather represents an extension of it. “Our goal is to build and scale the blurring of the lines between the virtual world and the physical world,” he said.

He compared it to other promotions that Zynga has done where it worked with brands, such as 7-11 and Frito Lay.

He said during those promotions, consumers were able to purchase bags of chips or other items, which had codes that could be redeemed inside FarmVille or other games. In those deals, consumers were obviously able to make the mental leap from buying something in the physical world to redeeming credits in the virtual world. Karp said the promotions experienced a redemption rate that was five to 10 times industry averages.

“What’s appealing to these brands is our 292 million monthly uniques, which is providing them with the reach of TV with the effectiveness of online and gaming,” he said.

Google has started to integrate Groupon-like offers into Google Maps, and it’s not stopping there.

Eric Rosenblum, Google’s director of product management for Google Offers, said consumers will start seeing offers for restaurants, spas and other services on a variety of Google properties soon.

“Any Google properties that have a strong location, social or commerce component are strong candidates,” he said.

Yesterday, Google started off its integration efforts with Google Maps 6.7. Now, consumers who use maps on Android devices will start receiving offers for nearby deals and coupons when conducting a search for a local business.

The announcements also hint at how Google sees the daily deals business evolving, which, as it turns out, is different from either Groupon or LivingSocial.

Rosenblum explained the search company is narrowing in on three types of offers: Daily deals, coupons and rewards.

A daily deal provides a huge discount to the consumer who pays for it upfront. In that scenario, the deal is used as a lead generator and may pull in customers from all across town. In contrast, a coupon is free and may give consumers a couple bucks off their next purchase, providing an additional “nudge” to pick one restaurant over the other.

And, finally, the third approach offers a loyalty program to merchants that will keep consumers returning through the use of rewards. Google’s rewards program is currently being piloted in the Bay Area.

Rosemblum said as the business evolves, merchants will be expected to pay different rates for the three types of services, but in the end, they will all end up with a traditional ad model. Under a cost per action approach, or CPA, merchants will pay Google only after a purchase has been made, and will pay based only on the value of that consumer.

During a trial period, merchants aren’t being charged anything for posting deals on Google Maps, but in the future, Rosenblum said, it’s logical to assume that a prepaid deal, which offers a deep discount and pulls in a customer from across town, will have a higher CPA than a coupon. “A nudge is different,” he said.

One aspect of the announcement yesterday that Rosenblum is completely sold on is delivering deals and offers based on a consumer’s location — it’s why Google isn’t rolling out deals on PC-based maps yet.

In March, LivingSocial announced it was no longer focusing on distributing location-based deals on mobile phones because it wasn’t working.

Rosenblum disagrees: “I think it will take awhile. You have to change consumer behavior, but Google mobile maps is something that people are using anyway. There are people trained on that behavior.”

He added, “This is an area where we will be patient. We are sold on the logic that when you are out and about, that you will be looking for local businesses. … We will continue down this path.”

Here’s how it works:

The company, which lets users alert their friends to their location by “checking in” via smartphone from coffee shops, bars and other locations, revealed for the first time that it plans to let merchants buy special placement for promotions of personalized local offers in July in a redesigned version of its app. All users will be able to see the specials, but must check into the venue to redeem them.

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Veit Dengler will become senior vice president of international operations, replacing Marc Samwer, who had joined the company as part of its 2010 acquisition of German firm Citydeal.

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Others think (non-iPad) tablets and daily deals.

According to new consumer data from PriceGrabber.com, topping the list of electronically-oriented Valentine’s Day gifts purchased over the past couple days are the HP Slate 500 tablet — remember that one? — and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF 101 tablet. The results, which will be released in full later today, are based on merchant referrals through PriceGrabber, a Kayak-like, Experian-owned site for comparative shopping.

Also in PriceGrabber’s Valentine’s Top 3: A 55-inch 3-D LED TV from Samsung; with a price range of $1,995 to $3,528, this love offering is probably best for someone you’re truly committed to.

This latest report only factors in purchases made on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Over the weekend, Apple’s 64 gigabyte iPhone 4S was one of the most popular purchases, alongside that big Samsung TV.

The shopping survey also indicates that the daily deals sector might get some love this year, with 42 percent of shoppers saying they plan to use an offer from Groupon or LivingSocial for purchasing gifts.

In my own inbox, I’ve gotten some pretty interesting deal offers over the past few weeks — including (but not limited to) his-and-hers massages, half-off flower bouquets, and a “bargain”-priced private dinner at Le Cirque (no sign yet of last year’s shooting-range deal for Valentine’s Day).

Despite the lean toward coupons — and in spite lingering economic woes — the majority of U.S. consumers plan to spend the same amount on this Valentine’s Day as they did last Feb. 14, according to PriceGrabber’s report.

(Image credit: Harle/Flickr)

The partnership understandably ended once Microsoft’s big search rival, Google, acquired The Dealmap in August.

“We can confirm that Bing is no longer partnering with The Dealmap and is now partnering with local and daily deal aggregator 8coupons,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We’re excited about the partnership with 8coupons and to be able to offer our customers access to great deals and discounts from across the Web — all in one place.”

A spokesperson for 8coupons also confirmed the partnership, adding that it started to replace The Dealmap a couple of weeks ago.

Rather than build a Groupon copycat as Google and Amazon have done, Microsoft has decided to partner with an aggregator that collects offers from various providers around the Web. Deals delivered by 8coupons come from Restaurant.com, Yelp, LivingSocial and GiltCity, among many others, as shown on the Bing Deals homepage.

Google’s purchase of The Dealmap was relatively small, especially compared to its failed $6 billion offer to buy Groupon. So far, The Dealmap is being used for the underpinnings of a pilot project that Google Offers has rolled out in the Bay Area.

In San Francisco, Google works with more than a dozen deal providers so that it can offer a variety of deals every day. It believes that in order to have relevant offers for all types of consumers, you need a lot of good deals, not just one a day.

Daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit reports that the daily deal industry in North America experienced marginal growth in November, as the major sites were adversely affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The number of deals offered increased only 1 percent while total industry gross billings grew by 2 percent during the month.

The largest provider, Groupon, saw the biggest decline.

Groupon grew 6 percent in November, but experienced a double-digit decline during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

Yipit bases its estimates on the sales of vouchers, which it tracks closely. Although Groupon no longer reveals exact sales data on its site, Yipit maintains that it is still able to make fair predictions based on historical data and industry insights.

The daily-deal declines were in stark contrast to the Black Friday experience of online retailers, which saw sales increase to $816 million on the day after Thanksgiving. ComScore said it was the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011, representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010.

The holiday declines occurred despite ambitious programs by both Groupon and LivingSocial, which tried to take advantage of the heavy retail season.

Groupon stepped up its marketing efforts through “Grouponicus,” a holiday shop selling local gifts, deals and travel getaways.

LivingSocial’s Black Friday efforts included offering deals for 20 national brands, including gift cards from Electronic Arts, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Skype and BlueNile.com. LivingSocial even launched a national TV campaign and radio spots to promote the deals.

But Yipit says those efforts didn’t pay off.

For the seven-day period ended Nov. 28, LivingSocial’s gross billings were down 30 percent and 19 percent compared to the two previous periods. And, because of the lower-priced national deals, the average size of its deal price fell to $28 in November from $32 a month earlier.

Yipit did not try to explain why the drops occurred around the holidays, except that they are similar to other periods, such as the Fourth of July.

But the patterns could be compared to social gaming space, which saw its usage sink during the holidays because people were not at work.

A secondary factor may be that more traditional retailers are known for Black Friday offers for others, while daily deals have historically been looked at as items you buy for yourself, and are not necessarily thought of as gifts.

Finally, Yipit said following Groupon and LivingSocial, Travelzoo, AmazonLocal and Google Offers ranked as the third, fourth and fifth largest national providers in November.

No word yet on how daily deals performed in the lead-up to Christmas in December.

The start-up, called Mobeam, got the endorsement of such a large company because of a major glitch in the couponing system: Most scanners in grocery stores cannot read a bar code displayed on the screen of a cellphone.

“Couponing has been one of the tried and tested tools to incentivize consumers to try our products,” said Jeff Weedman, P&G’s VP of global business development. “Ads around the world have moved digital, but there was a hole in the system. You can deliver coupons digitally, but frankly our customers weren’t happy about it. It doesn’t scan at most grocery scanners, and it slowed the system down because the checkout person would have to plug in the numbers manually.”

In October, Cupertino, Calif.-based Mobeam raised $4.9 million in capital to solve this problem, developing technology that coverts bar code data into a beam of light that can be read by most checkout-counter scanners.

A host of applications are already available for download on many smartphones — Starbucks has been one of the shining examples. Its application, which allows customers to pay at the register, has enabled 26 million mobile payment transactions this year alone.

But few people realize that Starbucks had to replace all of its scanners in its stores for the app to work.

Today, couponing is $3.7 billion segment of the consumer packaged goods market in North America, with more than 300 billion coupons distributed every year.

Increasingly, they are going digital, too.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in investments have been made this year in the distribution of coupons online and via mobile. Most recently, WhaleShark raised $150 million. Others include CouponCabin.com, which raised $54 million; and Coupons.com, which secured $230 million in two megarounds.

The prospect of finding coupons online and saving them to the phone, which can then be scanned at the register, is appealing. Currently, the main two options are to clip coupons from the newspaper, or to print coupons that were found online.

But don’t expect to be able to start using Mobeam’s technology tomorrow.

Mobeam will have to convince phone manufacturers to integrate its technology into their hardware. It says it is expecting phones to start shipping as soon as next year.

(Photo credit: sdc2027)

The shell company has grown through acquisition, picking up eight sites in the past two years, including RetailMeNot.com and Deals.com in the U.S., and VoucherCodes.co.uk in the U.K. In all, the company claims to attract 100 million unique visitors a year, most of whom are seeking discounts on anything from a gallon of milk to a pair of shoes.

This year, WhaleShark expects to be profitable on revenues exceeding $70 million.

The company’s CEO, Cotter Cunningham, told AllThingsD in an interview that the company is a classic roll-up. Its first $150 million in capital was spent on acquisitions, and that’s how it intends to spend its next $150 million.

Investors in the round include J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Institutional Venture Partners. Existing investors include Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Adams Street Partners and Google Ventures.

To date, the company has raised nearly $300 million in two rounds.

“We are actively pursuing a number of acquisitions, and it will take us another year to spend the money,” Cunningham said.

The coupon-clipping business, while ancient, has gotten its sexy back in recent months, thanks to the success of Groupon and the consumer’s general shift in thinking to look for deals online rather than in the Sunday newspaper. VCs have recognized this behavior change and have gravitated to it like a teenager to Justin Bieber.

CouponCabin.com of Whiting, Ind., raised $54 million, Coupons.com secured $230 million in two megarounds, and CouponTrade.com has secured a more modest $2.4 million in capital. I’m sure there are many more that I’m forgetting.

Cunningham says a number of things are driving the trend, and while Groupon’s popularity has helped, WhaleShark is not a daily deals site.

“Groupon went out and created a whole new market with a big sales force,” he said. “They’ve done an amazing job of creating a new market focused on an interesting aspect of the coupon that didn’t exist two or three years ago. Our focus is more on taking the existing couponing model and moving it online.”

Essentially, it’s the newspaper circular that WhaleShark is going after. ”I’m a huge fan of newspapers, but yes, ultimately that’s what we are doing,” Cunningham ’fessed up.

Today, it has aggregated about half a million coupons, from 130,000 merchants, on its site. Many of them are uploaded by consumers, who received a free shipping code in an email from the Gap or Old Navy. Customers have self-reported to WhaleShark that they save about $20 on average per transaction.

The business won’t require even half the sales staff of Groupon. Today, WhaleShark has about 100 people at its Austin headquarters, and 40 people in the U.K. Cunningham anticipates adding 50 to 75 employees in Austin, and doubling numbers abroad.

The company earns a commission from about 10 percent of the offers it distributes on the site. Additionally, it hopes to support the sites through advertising as it attracts a large audience.

[Photo credit: sdc2027.]

Both applications will enable consumers to shop online or see what’s available locally. Orders can be shipped or picked up.

The apps are being released ahead of the end-of-the-year shopping frenzy, which many retailers are hoping will be one of the busiest mobile commerce events ever.

“As customers use more smartphones and tablets, the Wal-Mart customer is doing the same thing,” said Gibu Thomas, the company’s SVP of mobile and digital.

That’s true, and it’s scary for big retailers. Increasingly, consumers are scanning barcodes to get reviews and compare prices before deciding whether to make a purchase or go somewhere else.

Thomas said the apps are not a defensive move against this trend, but rather a way to give consumers what they want. ”We want to know how we can help our customers shop better with us, which will make them shop more with us,” he argued.

Wal-Mart’s first iPad app launched about a week ago.

It lets people browse inventory in their local store, while also seeing what else is available online. Instead of duplicating the online experience, they’ve created categories. For instance, in the home section, shoppers will browse a catalog-like experience, where they’ll see pots and pans, stereo speakers and outdoor fireplaces without any additional information.

To see prices or more details, a user will have to choose an item.

The major new feature of the iPhone application, which originally launched more than a year ago, will be a shopping list with integrated voice dictation using Nuance’s speech recognition, and discounts through a partnership with Coupons.com.

The app will be available as soon as it receives Apple’s approval.

This app gets pretty close to what many companies have been describing as mobile commerce — minus near field communication that would allow users to tap and pay. And, at Wal-Mart’s scale, this is truly something for the mass market.

Thomas said 90 percent of consumers who come to a Wal-Mart store on a weekly basis come with a shopping list.

The iPhone shopping list feature will allow people to enter items manually using predictive text. Type “cheddar,” and you’ll see a number of cheese brands and the price of each item.

Consumers will also be able to enter items using their voice. When Thomas demonstrated it to me, the app was fairly accurate. It recognized orange juice and sour cream as one item each, but Campbell’s soup came up as two.

Because the real price is listed, budget-conscious shoppers can decide how much to pay for groceries before even getting to the store. Coupons from Coupons.com will also be integrated into the shopping experience. You might type in “yogurt,” but decide on Yoplait for the discount.

For some stores, Wal-Mart has given consumers the ability to find out what aisle the items are in from the phone. That capability will roll out to more stores as it comes out of beta. Eventually, the information could be overlaid on a map to show the most efficient route for getting all of your items.

Thomas also said the company anticipates being able to store shoppers’ receipts electronically, so that items purchased will be uploaded to an individual’s device, making it easier to create shopping lists in the future.

“We think of your mobile phone as your loyalty card. We don’t have cards but we think of it in the sense that you can use your phone to surface real-time discounts,” he said.

The applications were built by @WalMartLabs in Silicon Valley, which serves as the technology hub for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.

CouponCabin.com of Whiting, Ind., is the latest online coupon company to raise capital. The company has raised $54 million in its first round of funding.

The round closely follows competitors Coupons.com, which has secured $230 million in two megarounds; and CouponTrade.com, which has secured a more modest $2.4 million in capital.

CouponCabin’s round was led by JMI Equity.

CouponCabin says the cash will go toward growing its consumer audience and the relationships it has with merchants, including local businesses and groceries. Today, it has deals on its site from such brand-name properties as Dell, RadioShack, Target.com and Best Buy; and exclusives from lesser-known retailers like AutoAnything, Just My Size, BuyCostumes and Think Geek.

It says the main difference between it and its competitors is that CouponCabin tests the deals to make sure that coupons will work, checking up to three times a week that the offer is still valid. If it isn’t, they’ll give the consumer a $25 gift card.

The site, which was founded in 2003, works with more than 3,500 stores nationwide and has presented more than 100,000-plus offers this year alone. In addition, the company said it has generated $500 million in online retail sales for its merchants and has saved its users more than $300 million since 2003.

It’s a far cry from the $30 million round that Coupons.com announced on Monday, which followed a $200 million round in June.

But both companies are following the same premise that offline activities, like couponing, are moving online.

In particular, CouponTrade is targeting the secondary market, where consumers can go to trade both daily deal vouchers from providers, such as Groupon and LivingSocial, and gift cards from retailers, such as Macy’s, Walmart and Old Navy, so they don’t go to waste. So far, it lists inventory for 15 U.S. markets.

The secondary market is already fairly competitive, and in general, they are a bit rogue. They are not working with the major deal providers to prevent fraud, and instead rely on cash-back guarantees, which are often negotiated through payment providers, like PayPal, if a voucher ends up being used or not legitimate.

Others in the space include DealsGoRound, CoupRecoup, CityPockets and Lifesta. Since the company deals in selling unwanted gift cards as well, it is also competing against fairly established players such as PlasticJungle.

CouponTrade said investors include Jeff Cantalupo of Listen, a consulting firm in Chicago, and the Bousis family, who owns and operates the Chicago grocery chain, Cermak Fresh Market.

Ironically, the event took place at Terranea, which was the same resort where Google demonstrated its Wallet and Offers platforms at the D Conference only three months ago.

Since then, not only has the space heated up, with all the major players announcing their plans, but so has the rivalry between the two Bay Area companies. PayPal filed a lawsuit against Google for stealing trade secrets and key employees, and now they will compete for the attention of merchants and consumers.

In an interview, PayPal’s president, Scott Thompson, explained how the online payments leader was different, and why he believes the space will take off “faster than you ever imagined.”

In demonstrations earlier in the day, PayPal showed me a number of different scenarios, including using a phone number and PIN code to replace swiping a credit card at the payment terminal. It is also integrating check-in capabilities to its mobile application and location-based services to identify nearby stores or restaurants. What it won’t be doing is relying on near-field communication technology or implementing an offer network, unlike Google’s approach to the market.

Thomson, in his thick Boston accent, was eager to share his side of the story, after hearing so many other competitors go before him. Here are some highlights from the interview:

What problem are you solving?

Thompson: An offline merchant today is seeing slow to no growth. It’s tough. E-commerce companies are still growing, and if you have both, you are seeing slow to no growth.

First, we know merchants are worried about consumers coming to you from all different ways — online, in-person, mobile, etc. Multichannel retailing is real for them.

Second, retailers are asking “Who is the customer?” If you visit the site, we know. There’s a wealth of information about them. In offline, they don’t even know you are in the store.

You are battling the competition with your hands behind your back. The question is “How do I close the loop? How do I know that Tricia’s here?” Our solution does close that loop.

What about NFC? In the four presentations I saw, it wasn’t used once.

Thompson: We are not embracing technology, we are solving the problem of what can I do today. It’s hard for me to speak [about NFC] until there are standards. You can’t ask retailers to implement three to five standards.

We can’t be so bold or arrogant to think that you’ll adopt to the standards we’ve created. If we said “Throw away your terminals and get a new one, or buy a new phone” — no one has that level of influence and pull to say “You’ll have to adopt to the standards we’ve created.” … We will work with the new and the old.

If we only built something that worked with this phone, this bank, and this network and NFC, you might address 50 people out of the 350 million people in the U.S. We hope that all 350 million people use what we are doing today.

You boldly predicted recently that by the end of 2015, digital money will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. Some people think you are nuts!

Thompson: This wave is going to happen faster than you think. If every consumer can pay with PayPal with a mobile phone number and a PIN, then I don’t ever have to reach and find this [Thompson pulls his money clip out of his pocket].

Why is that a possibility? There’s lots of reasons!

The value to the merchant is compelling, and the other thing that’s true is that there’s been a lot of compression of credit. A whole lot of people don’t have credit cards, and there’s a higher number of debit transactions. That’s an important change, if your debit card is compromised. The bad guys will get your money. I need more security than ever before. So, will it happen? Will it be fast?

It will be faster than you ever imagined. The one that wins will be the wallet that lives with you everywhere.

How important is this intiative to PayPal? It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in acquisitions to get to this point.

Thompson: At analyst day, we said we would double our business by 2013, and those numbers don’t take into account any revenues from this point-of-sales initiative we are working on. This is going beyond to the next three-year commitment.

We’ll see revenues next year, but we are planting the seeds now [for 2014]. We said revenues would total $6 [billion] to $7 billion in 2013. To continue to grow at the same rate in 2014, you better do things now. We see an opportunity. We see technology changing, and now is the time to invest.

Just because you aren’t using NFC right away, doesn’t mean you won’t have a steep adoption curve. You’ll have to sign up offline merchants and get consumers on board.

Thompson: Our work is hard, and the relationships we’ll forge will be hard, too. You’ll see next year, when we formally announce our partners, that they are very big merchants.

[On the consumer side] If merchants see value, and integrate it and push it, consumers will use it. It will become a natural thing for you to use it in the grocery story or the pharmacy. You’ll be able to use it for everyday spending — that’s age-old logic. If the companies with the most foot traffic use it, it will be adopted.

So, it’s not for the mom-and-pop coffee shop?

Thompson: It’s where you are most frequently visiting.

Let’s talk about the competition. There’s American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Google and others, like Square, all coming up with different mobile payment strategies.

Thompson: I love it! I actually do!

It reinforces that the opportunity is big. I find it humorous that they find it a novelty. It wasn’t long ago — after all these years of them saying that no one needed a [digital] wallet — that they are saying that the wallet is now important and we better have one.

Besides, this is not unique to PayPal, but we play better the more sophisticated the competitor is. It’s remarkable how competitive our organization is.

Other payment providers are rolling out wallet technology for the chance to offer coupons or offers to the consumers — which could be a lucrative local advertising strategy. Will you be doing the same?

Thompson: In subsequent releases, merchants will be able to do things in the wallet, like offer coupons, but it is not our intention to compete in offers. We are doing payments.

I talked to a major retailer recently that said they’d find it a conflict if the payments provider offered discounts, rather than the retailer being the one to own the relationship with the consumer.

Thompson: That’s where we are different. The others are about coupons and advertising. We are about payments. That’s where 110 percent of our focus is. I believe we have this right. This will be a really big phenomenon in the multichannel world. We are in the business to help merchants grow their business. We are not trying to take the customer relationship away from them.

If we do our job right, all of our businesses will grow.

Everybody wants in: The oddball start-up, substantial media companies like the New York Times, even AT&T and Amazon.

And it won’t stop there. No really, trust me, it won’t.

The next crop of companies that you may start getting offers from could include your bank, or even that hotel chain or airline you use most frequently.

This is through a nifty invention called card-linked offers, which honestly isn’t all that new at all. It works very similarly to how your credit card company offers you discounts on rental cars or hotel rooms. But now it’s becoming an ad network of sorts that can accept offers from all kinds and can take place with any brand.

I’ve written about this before, and to be sure, there’s no lack of venture-backed companies all hoping this is the next Groupon-killer. Some of the participants in the space include BillShrink, FreeMonee, Clovr Media, Offermatic and Cardlytics.

In this case, I talked to Lexington, Mass.-based Cartera Commerce.

The company, which has 165 employees and has raised $30 million, is announcing a partnership today with InterContinental Hotels Group to allow hotel guests to earn rewards points while doing everyday shopping.

If users link a credit card to IHG’s loyalty program and make purchases at participating retailers with that card, they will earn points that can be redeemed at such InterContinental Hotel brands as Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo and Crowne Plaza.

The Aite Group estimates that by 2015, 460 million consumers will have signed up for incentive programs such as these, totaling about $1.7 billion in annual revenue for card issuers.

Tom Beecher, Cartera’s president and CEO, walks me through a PowerPoint presentation, comparing how it is better than Groupon’s business, and how it compares with Google.

On one side of the equation, he explains, there are the publishers, and on the other side there are advertisers and brands. That’s sort of like Google’s AdWords and AdSense.

In the same way, Cartera works with advertisers and also the banks, airlines, hotel chains, or other similar services that have access to the consumer. Some of its customers include Chase, Wells Fargo, American Airlines, Best Buy and USAA.

Because consumers link a credit card to these offers, these are considered very well-targeted ads. Cartera is able to collect information at the aggregate level to find out about spending habits. Advertisers can selectively make offers to consumers who shop at their competitors, but not current customers who already visit regularly. That helps retailers acquire new customers and not just give discounts to already loyal patrons.

So far, Cartera says it has processed $1 billion in transactions on its platform, and is seeing conversion rates from 20 to 40 percent.

Even though these offers are not as well recognized as Groupon, they are typically easier to redeem.

The offers don’t need to be purchased in advance or printed out. Consumers automatically get the discount when they use the same credit card that received the offer. The offers can appear in a number of formats, from a Web site to an email or a line item within their bank statement.

Photo Credit: Images_of_Money.

A study by the 451 Group’s M&A KnowledgeBase found that so far this year, mergers and acquisitions in the daily deal and coupon space are up 700 percent year over year to 35 from only five in the same period in 2010.

The acquisition of Ticket Monster in South Korea by LivingSocial last night actually represents the 36th transaction; the 35th transaction was conducted earlier this week when Google purchased The DealMap.

Other findings:

• Of the daily deal sites sold so far in 2011, 96 percent were founded less than two years ago; 63 percent of them were founded in 2010.
• Expanding into new markets, both domestically and internationally, is the most common reason for making an acquisition.
• Roughly half of the activity occurred in the Americas, while the other half was distributed throughout the Asia-Pacific and European regions.
• Groupon is by far the most active acquirer, responsible for 20 percent of transactions. The company has purchased nine competitors in Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Japan, South Africa, Israel, Russia and Chile.
• Only about 10 percent of the transactions have disclosed values but even with that, acquirers have spent $43m on daily deal properties.

The fast-growing website, which specializes in mass-emails touting daily coupons, plans to unveil a promotional tie-up with a Hollywood studio Wednesday. It is the first of many offers the site says it is planning with media companies in the coming months.

Groupon has previously served up deals for magazine and newspaper subscriptions, the Redbox movie-rental service and bundles of movie tickets, but hasn’t offered a substantial national deal for a specific movie.

Through Groupon, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. will offer half-price, or $6, tickets to its new suspense thriller “The Lincoln Lawyer,” which hits theaters Friday. The deal goes live Wednesday at midnight and runs through late Thursday evening.

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The move comes just three months after LivingSocial said it had raised $175 million from Amazon.com Inc. It isn’t clear what valuation LivingSocial is seeking or which investors are involved in the talks, but one person familiar with the matter said the company would like to raise $100 million from handful of marquee investors.

A spokeswoman for LivingSocial declined to comment.

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The idea piggy-backs on other loyalty programs already in the market, such as those of credit card companies that offer discounts when customers visit certain hotels or rental car companies.

But with Clovr’s platform, advertisers and brands can enable consumers to associate coupons directly with a credit card.

For instance, a banner ad could offer a 10 percent discount to an electronics store. Instead of printing out a coupon, the user can opt to link the deal to a credit card. The discount is activated only if the consumer uses that credit card at the register.

Since coming out of stealth mode late last year, Clovr has been fine-tuning its approach to the market.

Initially, it envisioned working directly with banks to make the service available to customers. But since advertisers want a large audience to target, the company’s co-founder and CEO Tom Burgess said today, the company realized it had to make the platform more widely available.

To that end, it partnered with credit card processing companies to enable 99 percent of debit or credit card holders in the country to participate in the offers. Burgess said that Clovr is now entering beta and that its first offers will start appearing in May when it is commercially available.

Clovr is part of a new market that is leveraging old technology called Card Linked Offers, or CLOs for short.

Coincidentally, one of Clovr’s biggest competitors is also being backed by someone Burgess knows all too well.

Yesterday, Clovr’s close competitor, Offermatic, announced it had raised $4.5 million in a first round of funding. Investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ron Conway and Omar Hamoui.

Hamoui was the founder of AdMob, the mobile advertising company purchased by Google for $750 million in 2009. And Burgess was the founder of Third Screen Media, a mobile ad network that was acquired by AOL in 2007.

Today, Offermatic is Burgess’ West Coast competitor, much like AdMob was his West Coast competitor when both he and Hamoui were executives in the mobile advertising space.

A third company competing in the space is Atlanta-based Cardlytics.

Burgess said there’s one main difference between Clovr and Offermatic. Clovr is a platform that any ad network can use. It does not have a sales team and is not offering deals directly to consumers.

Offermatic launched its beta in December, and sends discounts to consumers based on their spending history. Similarly, it links a consumer’s credit and debit cards to its system so that people receive the discount automatically.

To be sure, all three companies are trying to solve the problem of low redemption rates of physical coupons or vouchers.

Clovr’s second round of funding was led by Bain Capital Ventures. Clovr Media seed investors Kepha Partners and Common Angels also participated. In total, the company has raised nearly $10 million.