Merchant Capture
While American banks are thinking about how to reduce the the usage of checkbooks, the DoubleBeam company decided to turn up this payment option in its favor. The startup has created a service that allows you to convert paper checks into electronic form and make purchases using them through a mobile phone.
It looks like this: the customer, using the application, scans a page from the checkbook, creating a virtual copy – now he will not need to carry it with. When paying at the checkout in the store, he can scan the purchase QR code with his smartphone, after which an electronic copy of the check from the checkbook is automatically transferred to the seller’s bank.
Registration in the DoubleBeam app takes five easy steps. The first step is to enter your email address. Then take a photo of the license or any identity document. The company explains this requirement by the fight against fraud. At the third stage, the user must independently create a pin-code. The customer then needs to rip the blank page out of their checkbook and take a picture of it.
The photo will be saved to DoubleBeam cloud storage. Each time you pay for an item using the application, the information from this page will be used to create an electronic check. This virtual check will be sent to the account of the merchant company.
At the end of the registration procedure, the user needs to confirm the correctness of the information about the check details. After that, the DoubleBeam app can also be used to pay in online stores. Here, instead of scanning a QR code, the buyer chooses the payment method by check.
According to the creators of the service, it helps merchants save on acquiring services, since processing electronic checks is 80% cheaper than servicing bank cards.
To motivate buyers to use the new service, sellers create loyalty programs, offer discounts and gifts. For example, DoubleBeam’s first customer, Homeland in Oklahoma, is offering users a 20-cent discount for every gallon of gasoline when they pay with their mobile phone. In some cases, DoubleBeam creates customized apps for merchants. They integrate various useful functions for users – for example, a shopping list.
Mobile commerce is becoming more and more popular in the United States. 44% of smartphone owners use them to pay for various purchases.