Shopkick Adds MasterCard to Improve Its Mobile Rewards App

Shopkick now works with both Visa and MasterCard to offer targeted rewards using transaction data gathered at the point of sale.

Shopkick provides a smartphone app that rewards consumers for visiting and spending money at merchants' physical stores. The app uses a phone's microphone to pick up on a signal in retailers' stores to indicate that the consumer has visited in person. The consumer then instantly receives "kicks," a rewards currency, for the visit.

Shopkick announced its Visa partnership last year and its MasterCard partnership on June 27. By working with the card networks, shopkick can instantly provide rewards for consumers' spending.

"You swipe your card, and a second later you get a message on your phone" indicating the number of kicks earned, Cyriac Roeding, co-founder and CEO of shopkick, said in an April interview describing the arrangement with Visa.

"All we need is the connectivity to Visa, there is zero integration for the retailer," he said.

As part of a limited-time promotion, shopkick is also offering 250 kicks for each MasterCard product consumers link to their shopkick account.

Shopkick has been working aggressively to improve the appeal and the operation of its app. In April, it updated its app to allow users to receive kicks without being connected to a phone's data network at the time the rewards were earned. This makes shopkick's app more appealing to retail partners whose thick walls may interrupt cell-phone signals.

In June, shopkick announced a deal with Giftango, which agreed to deliver gift cards to shopkick users as a way to redeem their rewards.