Pep Boys Rock Passbook Coupons

While many in the retail and payments space are waiting to see if Apple will delivery on all the speculation on its future as the brand that launched mobile payments, at least one major chain says the see the potential for the future in the already solid results Passbook is delivering.

Ron Stoupa, chief marketing officer for Pep Boys says that though they’ve seen many players–Google notably–rise in the space, it looks to him like Apple might just have the juice to ignite m-pay.  Pep Boys launched a major loyalty initiative earlier in 2014 with the aim of corralling its database of 36 million loyalty members across 805 locations.  Part of that push has been allowing consumers to redeem rewards and coupons through Apple’s Passbook App and in Google Wallet. While they are seeing customers use both says Stopa, Pep Boy’s customers are using Apple “significantly” more often than Google.

“People are viewing offers on Passbook and 26 percent of them that viewed that offer added it to their mobile wallet,” Stopa told Ad Week.  He further noted that 30 percent of the consumers who add the coupons to Passbook are then redeeming them, and that only .8 percent are removing them.  This falls well below the normal removal average of around 3 percent.

“It looks like they took some learnings from Google Wallet (with Apple Pay,)” he said. “They have an extremely more loyal user base than anyone out there, so it will be interesting. I think it will get impressive trial more than Google Wallet did.”