July Systems Mixes Mobile, Social and Payments for Non-Techies

July Systems provides tools for merchants unfamiliar with programming to put together revenue-generating mobile experiences — with a hint of social media and a dash of mobile commerce.

"Mobile payments are now changing how consumers do a one-click pay," says Rajesh Reddy, CEO of July Systems. "Consumers are so much more willing to do small transactions because it's easy and efficient now."

The company's fourth-generation platform, July MX, is a universal cloud-based platform giving merchants tools to create mobile applications.

Merchants can create apps that plug into an existing app and present consumers with short-lived offers, Reddy says. The technology could be used for Father's Day promotions, for example, or for collecting funds to help the victims of recent natural disasters.

"There are so many possibilities when you allow for a mash up between mobile, social, commerce and location," Reddy says. "Each are very powerful … but if you mix and match there are so many new use cases for how people can consume these services."

In 2013, the number of active mobile app users is set to hit 1.3 billion people, according to a report by eMarketer. By 2016, the number of active mobile app users is expected to rise to 2.1 billion, which means there's a substantial opportunity for interaction via a mobile device.

Because merchants interact with their customers on a daily basis, July Systems wanted to make it possible for them to develop apps without the help of hired programmers.

Business owners "are very consumer-savvy but not necessarily technical," he says. "Now they're creating sites and apps by themselves within minutes."

July Systems charges a monthly subscription fee, which starts at $2,000, for its technology, plus it charges usage fees depending on how many consumers click on the application. It also gets a revenue share if a consumer purchases a product through the application.

Current clients include CNN, ESPN and Toys R Us. In 2012, July Systems saw 140 million unique customers monthly with more than 7 billion transactions, Reddy says.

Plus, July Systems will be announcing a relationship with one of the largest payments providers and media companies in the U.S. shortly, Reddy says, though he would not name the company.

"In the new world that's evolving … every single moment there's an opportunity to use that phone to interact with the world around you," Reddy says. "In this new world we want [merchants] to be able to build and launch and engage users in very compelling ways."

Other companies are aware of the need to tailor new payments technology for the less tech-savvy. Patreon, a company that counts musician Jack Conte of Pomplamoose as a co-founder, is a payments and e-commerce system designed for artists. MoonClerk offers payments processing services from Stripe to people who don't have the programming expertise to use Stripe's services directly.