Billeo Inc. and Cartera Commerce Inc. announced a partnership Wednesday to present card offers in consumers' Web browsers as they shop.
"The challenge for consumers is that they have no shortage of offers in their lives," says Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst for Javelin Strategy & Research. "Billeo and Cartera are trying to hit the consumer in the process of shopping online."
Cartera, of Lexington, Mass., creates marketing programs linked to consumers' credit and debit cards in online, mobile and physical store locations.
Billeo, of Santa Clara, Calif., creates browser and mobile applications that present consumers with special merchant offers while shopping online, and it helps them organize their financial lives while paying bills online.
Cartera and Billeo have designed an application that works as a plug-in to a standard browser. Consumers download the application via their bank or another reward-program provider, such as an airline.
The application then alerts consumers of special credit card offers for things like cash back on dollars spent. These alerts appear as consumers conduct searches and shop for items online.
The application pulls up the offers as an overlay, not a pop-up, as consumers mouse over product selections at a merchant's website. Consumers redeem offers simply by clicking on them and buying online, or by swiping a registered credit card at a physical store location.
"We see this as an important marketing channel to give personalized offers," says
Marc Caltabiano, vice president of marketing and product management for Cartera.
Cartera plans to make the service available in mobile format sometime in the next year, Caltabiano says.
Cartera may be on to something by starting the offer process early, while consumers are conducting searches.
"People do research sitting at a desk, that is how many people are using their desktops," says Stessa Cohen, research director of banking industry advisory services at Gartner Inc.
Billeo and Cartera compete against a host of other companies that do transaction and search engine-marketing, such as Linkable Networks Inc. of Boston and GotApex.com, which presents daily deals through social media sites.
The product is also somewhat similar to services offered by merchant-funded rewards providers like Cardlytics Inc. and Truaxis Inc., experts say.
Merchant-funded rewards programs have an advantage because they are operated directly with banks, making use of anonymous transaction data that remains the property of the bank, experts say.
By contrast, the Cartera program may ultimately suffer from lack of bank interest because the bank is somewhat disintermediated, experts say.
"The proposition to the bank is not as strong," says Zil Bareisis, a senior analyst for the research firm Celent "It is still linked to their card, but it does not draw you to the bank site."
By registering a card with Cartera, the bank essentially hands the customer card relationship over to an outside program manager, Bareisis says.
Another issue is the requirement for consumers to download a special application. The application also might crash browsers or create problems with anti-virus products, experts say.
"I would be a much bigger fan of it being delivered as an application or website that you could access through a mobile device," says Andy Schmidt, research director for commercial banking and payments at TowerGroup.
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