Cheque please, with an order of crypto: Glance Pay goes blockchain
Canada’ s Glance Pay [ CSE: GET OTCQB: GLNNF] has quickly made a name for itself as a mobile payment solution that irons out pain points between buyer and seller by making payments faster, more efficient and more secure. The company’s next revolution is a full pivot to blockchain technology, marrying the benefits of Glance Pay to Glance Coin, a new cryptocurrency designed to reward customer loyalty and provide access to exclusive offers.
Glance Pay was originally launched almost two years ago.
“The payment space wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t as efficient as it should have been,” says Penny Green, president and COO of Glance Technologies Inc. “Even with chip and PIN card payment, it takes an average of eight minutes between the time you get your restaurant bill and then pay and leave. Using other mobile payment solutions still requires you to make contact with a big chunk of merchant payment hardware that looks like it escaped from the 1980s.”
Customers simply download the free Glance Pay app and link it to their credit card. Using a mobile phone to pay a restaurant, hair salon or other bill can be as simple as photographing the bill and allowing Glance to calculate the tip and handle the payment. Glance Pay not only speeds up the payment process, but also leverages opportunities to offer rewards to customers, while building loyalty to businesses accepting the payment system.
“There’s no cost to the customer to use the app,” says Green. “And they receive customized digital coupons and special offers that are built into the app and can be redeemed with the merchant. At the same time, they’re collecting any rewards associated with using their credit card.”
The app also allows users to track their expenses and rewards while browsing other businesses offering Glance Pay. Those merchants can earn additional business by offering customized offers that can be time stamped or geo-tagged.
And Glance Pay handles all of these functions securely. The system’s fraud record to date? Zero per cent — a point of pride for the company.
But if mobile payments are the future of commerce, blockchain technology is the future of mobile payments, combining rock solid privacy and security with an expanded range of functionality. At the same time, a recent Nielsen Global Retail Loyalty- Sentiment Survey notes that 85 per cent of Canadians already participate in one or more customer loyalty programs. Their favourite rewards? Rebates and cash back, followed by free products.
“We believe that the time is right to take advantage of the huge opportunities in both these areas by launching a rewards-based crypto-currency in the form of Glance Coin,” says Green. “We also believe that our crypto-currency rewards platform could become the first mainstream, widely-adopted application of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology that can impact the lives of everyday people.”
The Glance team is working on integrating the Glance Pay functionality with an existing end-to-end blockchain solution and are very pleased with their progress. The combination of the Glance Pay technology with blockchain has the potential to majorly benefit consumers.
“If customers are already using Glance Pay, using Glance Coin will feel like second nature to them,” says Green. “Some people see cryptocurrency as deep, dark and unfathomable tech. Glance Coin has the potential to tip the scale into usability by humanizing and simplifying blockchain technology. We couldn’t have asked for a better gift from the tech world than cryptocurrency, because it enhances everything we’re doing.”
Green i sn’ t underestimating the novelty factor of owning cryptocurrency, but Glance Coin will take that experience up a notch by making it easier to spend it as well. The new currency will also encourage customer engagement by offering a whole new range of specialized offers that reward loyalty, meaning that more participation in the ecosystem means more value. For example, in addition to providing merchants with an off- the- shelf l oyalty program, Glance Pay can sweeten the deal by rewarding customers with Glance Coin cash back offers.
“We envision a broadening ecosystem in which Glance Coin can be used for business- to- business transactions,” says Green. “It can also build communities by operating like a social network. Imagine a university where all of the students are signed up and linked to area merchants. Merchants could make digital offers directly to students, students could chat with each other and pass offers to their friends and it could be used as a peer- to-peer money transfer system, all the while earning crypto rewards for users within the Glance Pay ecosystem. Where we’re going is very exciting.”
Glance expects to make the fully integrated blockchain technology and the launch of Glance Coin available to consumers later in 2018.