This capability is enabled by an expansion of the companies’ strategic partnership and a completed integration of InComm Payments’ retail network and payments infrastructure and SKUx’s Verified Commerce platform, according to the release.
With the new item-level offer capability, brands and partners can prove a direct link between an offer and a product sale. For example, a brand can fund an offer for a specific product, a retail or media partner can deliver that offer to shoppers, and the brand and the partners can get verification that the eligible item was purchased at a participating retailer, the release said.
“Now more than ever, it is critical to give brands and our partners more precision in how they deliver value at retail,” Mary Llewellyn, senior vice president of retailer marketing and promotional payments at InComm Payments, said in the release. “By combining our retail distribution and payments capabilities with SKUx’s unique platform technology, we can help partners bring product-specific offers to shoppers and see where those offers turn into purchases.”
SKUx CEO and Co-Founder Bobby Tinsley said in the release that the company’s Verified Commerce platform is designed to connect a brand’s investment and a shopper’s decision at the item level.
“A brand should be able to put an offer behind a specific product, make it easy for a shopper to use, and verify that the product was purchased,” Tinsley said. “Our expanded partnership with InComm Payments helps us bring that model to more brands, retailers and partners.”
InComm Payments and SKUx announced their strategic partnership in February, saying they aimed to improve how digital payments are distributed for humanitarian aid and other applications in emerging markets.
In that initiative, the companies said they would pair their capabilities to let organizations send real-time, branded digital payments with tighter spending rules that limit where a payment can be used and what it can buy, down to a specific product.
In their February announcements, InComm Payments and SKUx also said that beyond aid programs, their partnership also targets consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail promotions, where brands want a more measurable alternative to coupons and rebates.
