Perka CEO Wants to Make Loyalty Turnkey Solutions the Easiest to Use for Customers

Alan Chung CEO of mobile marketing and consumer loyalty platform Perka is excited about his company’s future now after it was acquired this week by First Data Corp. a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing.

“We want to address concerns about integration of technology sophistication on the merchant side,” Chung told Loyalty 360. “We want to make turnkey solutions easier than existing solutions. We want to make it easy for both for both merchants and consumers. From the consumer side, it should be as easy, if not easier than what Starbucks has today.”

Perka is a startup young startup company that provides loyalty solutions to help retailers engage customers via mobile and digital technologies. Last year First Data acquired POS technology startup Clover.

As part of First Data, Perka will be able to scale its business faster than any other loyalty solution provider with any other means – taking advantage of First Data’s channels, financial resources, and one of the most trusted brands in the payments industry. Perka will continue to operate independently with the current management and product development teams.

“I’ve been through the M&A process a number of times,” Chung explained. “Every entrepreneur has concerns, but First Data put those concerns at ease. They made it easy for me to make this decision. Their entire senior management team is new. They’re very agile and interested in creating an environment for us. Very specifically, they offered and said we would be a separate entity. Everything so far that I’ve experienced with them has been about support and letting us innovate.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Perka Punchcard service and Perka Flexpoints for retail stores and sit-down restaurants deliver sustainable and highly personal marketing and incentive programs to consumers. The cloud-hosted platform features merchant-validated transactions, triggered offers, mobile messaging, and retail customer relationship data for the merchant.

Chung said the loyalty industry is rapidly moving from being proprietary and closed to open and interconnected – and this shift opens up tremendous opportunities for small and mid-sized businesses to run virtually the same mobile marketing programs as major brands.

Based in New York City and Portland, Ore., Perka operates loyalty programs for businesses ranging from neighborhood coffee shops to ultra-modern retailers and supports active merchants in all 50 U.S. states, Canada, the U.K., Australia, Africa and Latin America.

Perka is an easy-to-use alternative to the old-fashioned paper punch card. Merchants create a unique set of loyalty rewards and incentives tailored to their business. When a customer makes a purchase at a participating merchant, they check in using the free Perka smartphone app or by sending an SMS text message. The check-in displays the customer name and how actively they shop on the merchant’s mobile tablet, webpage or linked point-of-sale system.

This personal interaction helps merchants get to know their regular customers even better. The merchant validates each purchase and the consumer continues to collect points until redeemed for selected perks. Business owners can also deliver custom messages and special offers directly to customers’ phones that encourage repeat visits and additional sales.

Chung offered some advice for brands.

“Get to know your customers and understand what they’re doing,” he said. “To me it boils down to having data, understanding data, and acting upon that data. Get to know your customers and give them the best service you can. Identify who are your best customers and focus on the best.”

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