Retail veteran John Costello has become president of Pay By Touch, a payment service that is building out its loyalty-marketing capabilities.
Costello had been executive VP-merchandising and marketing for The Home Depot for nearly three years; before that, he was chief global marketing officer at Yahoo, and earlier had been president-CEO of Nielsen Marketing Research. Costello led Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s marketing from 1993 to 1998. He joined San Francisco-based Pay By Touch on Sept. 25.
Four-year-old Pay By Touch handles payment and gift-card transactions using shoppers’ fingerprints to authorize transactions. The service is now in 2,400 check-cashing facilities and grocery stores, including Piggly-Wiggly, Lowe’s Pay & Save, BIGGS, Cash Wise, Harris-Teeter, Farm Fresh and Hornbacher’s, as well as Supervalu’s Jewel-Osco, Albertsons and Cub Foods.
The company has been testing a tailored promotions program, SmartShop, with Rochester, NY, grocer Green Hills. A SmartShop kiosk lets shoppers touch the screen to access offers triggered by that shopper’s purchase history. They can print out a list of offers, then redeem them at checkout by using the fingerprint scanner.
Redemption of SmartShop offers range from 8% to 40%; participating shoppers have boosted their spending 6% (with a 10% increase in number of shopping trips). Shoppers also can opt to get offers via e-mail or cell phone.
The company’s core service is electronic payment. So far, 3 million consumers have opened Pay By Touch accounts, using a virtual “wallet” to access checking and credit accounts through a finger scanner at checkout. A handful of Supervalu banners, including Cub Foods and Albertsons as well as Jewel-Osco, have run promotions encouraging shoppers to sign up for Pay By Touch. Chain-specific sweepstakes at Albertsons and Cub automatically entered shoppers each time they used Pay By Touch. Jewel offered a radio as a premium for new enrollees; those who used Pay By Touch five times earned an additional premium, a fleece blanket.
Pay By Touch also manages loyalty programs, handling rewards for a total of 130 million consumers through a total of 12,000 stores. Pay By Touch recently bought competitor BioPay, Herndon, VA, expanding its presence in check-cashing facilities.
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