Last week CeBIT showcased 10 finalists as part of PitchFest 2018 awarding PingData as this year’s winner, a company who wants to digitise the world’s paper receipts.

PCN spoke to PingData co-founder Paul Weingarth, a former PayPal executive, about how this start up is connecting all parts of the payments ecosystem.

According to Weingarth, PingData provides a data exchange platform that allows merchant POS software to automatically send receipt data to the customer’s online banking app. By linking the receipt data to the bank card, it means there is no need to capture a customer’s email or mobile phone number. This removes friction in the checkout process and means that receipts can be displayed in context, next to the relevant transaction in the customers banking app.

Working with our tier-one bank partners will provide us with the opportunity to rapidly scale customer and merchant adoption. Unlike the scatter gun approach of the 1990’s advertising letterbox drops, PingData’s receipting solution also provides an opportunity for merchants to re-engage customer’s post purchase. For example, merchants can link offers to the smart receipt which can be targeted based on the customers demographics and frequency of shop.

The solution has been developed to benefit all participants in the commerce ecosystem: customer’s benefit by automatically receiving their smart receipt into their bank app, banks enrich their digital channels and merchants unlock a new post sale engagement opportunities, he said.

Who pays?
Merchants join on a ‘freemium’ offer which allows them to provide the receipting solution to their customers free of charge. They also receive anonymised customer data such as demographic information as part of the value exchange. The merchant can choose to upgrade to the paid version which includes engagement propositions in the receipt such as offers and feedback.

The banks pay for the integration with PingData on a consumption basis through a ‘software as a service model’ which is currently being trialled with top tier banks and expected to launch later in the year.

In time there will be additional add-ons to the Ping Data offering which will include one-click loyalty sign up inside the smart receipt.

We have seen the likes of Alipay and WeChat do an incredible job of building valuable customer experiences around the payment. Some of the Australian banks are coming to the realisation their biggest competitors may not necessarily be other mainstream banks. At PingData, we want to partner with them to enhance their cardholders experience in addition to providing them with new ways to engage cardholders post-payment, Weingarth concluded.

PingData are currently working with a number of Australia’s largest banks and retailers and are due to make some announcements in the coming weeks.

Author: Catherine Batch, Associate, Brisbane, Payments Consulting Network.