Founded in 1998, Ecrio has received venture backing from the U.S., Japan and Europe: Aplix Corporation, CDB Web Tech, CSK Venture Capital, JAIC, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Nexit Ventures, Noventi/CIR Ventures, NTT DoCoMo and Visa Inc. In September 2007, the company completed its ‘C’ round of funding, which exceeded $24 million.
Competitors
Valassis NewsCorp CMS Traditional paperbased coupon ecosystem
Product Description
MoBeam uses a light source on a keychainbased device to duplicate the sequencing of a standard barcode. A standard laser scanner— like those in use in over 35 million retail locations in the US—interprets those light beams as it would the reflection of a printed barcode for coupons, gift cards, or loyalty programs. Offers are delivered to the device via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones or transceivers, or transferred from the Web using a USB connection.
Market Opportunity
The industry-standard redemption rate for printed coupons is less than 2%. Empirical data from the nascent mobile coupon market has yet to be published; some mobile coupon vendors report 10-25% redemption rates. Frost & Sullivan report that some retailers providing mobile coupons achieved 100% increases in redemption over their paper-based offers. (http://www. newswiretoday.com/news/14943/)
DEMO Says
Rather than waiting for an army of merchants to adopt new mobile payment technology, Ecrio developed technology that allows mobile phones to work with omnipresent checkout scanners. Of course, they then faced the task of getting mobile phone makers to adopt that technology. Not one to leave destiny to someone else, Ecrio has now embedded its scanner technology into a smart, Bluetooth-enabled fob that bridges online and mobile marketing and retail shopping, while providing the foundation stones for a seamless, smart mobile payment system.