Mobeam & ProLogic to promote mobile digital coupon tech

Rating: Works with existing PoS but requires LED inside handset

Here’s an interesting partnership. Mobeam which has specialist mobile phone technology has formed and alliance with ProLogic which operates a coupon clearing house facility for US based retailers. The beauty of this joint effort is that it won’t require any new equipment to be installed at the point-of-sale – it works with existing PoS systems. The only catch is that Mobeam doesn’t quite explain how it is going to get its technology onto existing handsets as well as persuading handset makers to build the technology into their future mobile phones.Mobeam describes its technology as ‘light-based beaming’. It claims that many existing handsets have LED lights already built-in.

The company basically maintains that existing smartphone screens aren’t bright enough to be read by traditional PoS scanners.

So Mobeam ‘beams’ the information into the scanner instead. The advantage to this approach is that utilises industry standard barcode data for coupons, content, or offers which can then be read by existing PoS systems.

The alliance with ProLogic will mean that vendors can turn coupons into a truly digital format which can then be processed by an existing coupon redemption network.

Purely digital coupons also provide more extensive analytic capabilities, allowing better measurement of campaign effectiveness, reducing coupon fraud, and driving efficiencies in distribution, purchase validation and processing.

The catch is that Mobeam has got to get handset vendors to use the technology.

It claims that its sytem works with any LEDs used in mobile phones – including infrared LEDs often used with proximity sensors.

Mobeam then says its APIs are added to the firmware, enabling mobeam technology to utilise the LED light sources already planned for the mobile device.

Well, GoMobile News wishes Mobeam the best of luck with negotiations with handset vendors.