
Punchd - A Loyalty Program (from Google) - jedc
http://getpunchd.com/
======
coderdude
Did anyone notice this little Apple logo yelling at the Android logo at the
bottom of the page?

<http://getpunchd.com/img/june/idiots.png> (<http://i.imgur.com/sy7QX.png>)

It's called idiots.png. Is this illustrating that it's stupid to bicker about
your mobile platform? Or is it calling Apple users idiots (it does look like
the Apple character is yelling about something and Android guy just looks like
he's thinking "wtf?").

Oh the possible Internet drama.

~~~
nessus42
It's criticizing Apple for suing everything Android.

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aresant
Punchd raised ~$50k at "500 Startups" demo day, then three months later was
bought by Google (July of this year).

That is called how damn fast it is to get noticed and bought if you execute
brilliantly in a big market.

And it only looks better now than it did.

It's a beautiful, elegant way of digitizing a marketing tactic that everybody
already knows and understands.

The little paper signs "Buy _____ and get _____" are the perfect visualization
of how well thought out this product is - nice job.

~~~
chexton
I think there is really something in this. It does look like a very
streamlined product with nice touches...but they must have executed very
effectively.

From what I've read there are a bunch of startups in this space, doing very
similar things. Even here in Australia there are a few I can think of that are
doing pretty well. As none have yet been bought by Google for $50m, I'd be
curious to know more about the kind of traction Punchd had prior to the
acquisition (how many users did they have, were the pulling in revenue) - it's
always interesting to know more about how a startup with this kind of success
executed!

Also, hats off to the Punchd guys...I remember the thread about the
acquisition and there was a lot of praise for the founders themselves, as
people and as founders.

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ben1040
A frozen yogurt shop I used to visit a lot started using Punchd back in June.
The app is cute, but I'd rather just have a paper card.

After the transaction, the clerk has to pull out a QR code card to let you
scan. The app on your phone won't try scanning until it can get a location to
verify you're actually there. Maybe a quarter of the time my phone's flaky GPS
has trouble getting a location, so the clerk ends up standing there with the
card out while I hold my phone out. Then once it scans, it takes a moment or
two for the app to talk to the backend and register the punch. Even if my
phone had perfect GPS it'd still be a little too much effort.

The yogurt shop eventually wound up getting paper punch cards in addition to
Punchd, and I started using those instead of the mobile app. It takes less
time for them to just take the card and stamp it than it does to do the whole
Punchd dance.

With Google's oomph behind this, I could see them start using NFC tags, which
might speed up the process. But until then I've quit using this as a customer.

~~~
dpark
So the punch is based on scanning a QR code? Unless I'm misunderstanding, this
is really broken. It sounds like someone could write a counterfeit app that
scans the QR code, records the current location, and resubmits every minute,
recording tons of punches that never actually happened.

They should do it the other way. Your phone should pop up a unque code for the
cashier to scan. I guess that makes the barrier to entry higher, though. Maybe
change the QR code daily at least (for businesses concerned about fraud,
anyway).

~~~
ben1040
_So the punch is based on scanning a QR code?_

That's correct. The business has a card with a QR code printed on it that you
scan to get a "punch."

This is part of the value proposition for the merchants, I guess - they don't
need a phone or device of their own at all, they just need to print a few
things. The tradeoff is maybe the system is easier to game for the tiny
percent that is technically inclined enough to try it.

~~~
datums
Perka closes that loop hole by having the person behind the counter verify
your visit using the app as a merchant.

<http://getperka.com/foryourbusiness/merchantfaq.html>

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mrtron
Don't underestimate how huge this is.

It is directly competing with where daily deal sites are trying to evolve to,
like Groupon's Rewards.

<http://www.groupon.com/merchants/rewards>

Most Groupon clones are trying to quickly roll out reward systems through
credit card processing.

Google's solution seems more eloquent, with more opportunities for social and
advertising directly to a user with location services, mobile alerts, etc.

Basically you could fill a 2011 trendy startup bingo card with this product.

------
shoota
This seems to compete with some of the benefits of using Google Wallet.
Although, I suppose a Google Wallet based loyalty card requires a lot larger
investment by the business.

Also since a QR code is just an image and not something more complicated like
an NFC tag what's to stop someone from taking a picture of it with their phone
and scanning it multiple times at home?

edit:* well looking at their FAQ they say this: Patent-pending technology
guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity
analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure.

That still has to trust the smartphone to report the correct GPS and velocity,
additionally I think faking the statistical variation might not be too
difficult.

~~~
donw
Faking the variation shouldn't be hard at all, but how many people would be
willing to take the time _and_ risk being prosecuted for fraud in exchange for
some free coffee?

Even if 10% of customers abuse the system, it's still a net win for the
business. They'll have to cough up some free coffees or sandwiches, but the
fraudster is still in the shop and likely to pay for incidentals that go with
the promotion; e.g., a drink or chips to go with their sandwich, croissant
with the coffee, etc.

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oldstrangers
I'm digging this focused, simple and elegant approach from Google. This
product isn't overreaching, it doesn't try to do 1,000 things, it looks like
it could've been a startup that just launched. It even has its own domain!

I really like the direction Google is heading under Page. Focus and simplicity
with real solutions.

------
adamtmca
Applied to yc with this idea couple years ago, cool to see it in production.
Sharing a loyalty card with a group of friends (i.e. when anyone makes a
purchase everyone gets a stamp) was one of the social features we were excited
about, I'm interested to see what they come up with.

~~~
bmelton
Punchd has been around awhile. I've still got the original app on my phone
from before they were acquired by Google.

They went through the classic "Oh, we got bought by Google so we're closing
doors for an ambiguous amount of time before maybe reappearing again later"
phase that it seems most Google acquisitions go through.

In that time, the Five Stars guys have really gotten traction. I don't know if
that paves the way for Punchd or not, but I thought it was a great idea before
Google bought it, and apparently, so did Google.

~~~
ChrisArchitect
there's so many of these google acquisitions doing the 'disappear' thing that
when they do resurface we've almost all forgotten and all is new again. haha.
Maybe that's the point.

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jedc
According to the app description in Android market: "Currently only working at
specific locations: San Francisco, Portland, Austin, San Luis Obispo,
Fullerton and San Diego."

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akx
The idea's nice (though it'll take approximately forever for anything akin to
this to land here in Finland).

I was annoyed by the quality of the copy here though... no one ran it through
any sort of spell check? <http://getpunchd.com/img/june/tour/moneymoney.jpg>

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vetler
Huh .. I had an idea like this a few weeks ago when I saw a video about paying
with your phone using NFC. However, I usually think my ideas to death, so I
ended up dismissing it. Probably why I'm not an entrepreneur. My problem was
perhaps that I considered it in the scale of small coffee shops, and found the
hassle of them getting the infrastructure and the increased overhead of
printing and scanning codes to be too big of a problem for adoption.

However, for larger chains, this seems like an excellent solution. Getting the
infrastructure in place won't be such a big problem if you roll this out
across, let's say McDonalds. You could have a McDonald's-specific app and tie
it in with Facebook and Twitter and Gowalla whatnot. But for smaller shops,
there might not be such a big advantage. They might not even need this. But
I'll happily be proven wrong.

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gormlai
I have worked on a competing product called OneGratis (
<http://www.onegratis.com> ). It works in a similar fashion to Punchd, except
I think we might have been out a little bit earlier and the end-user is not
required to create an account.

Regarding the comments on cheating, I think one of the best ways to combat
that, is to build in functionality to disable phones online. As users are
forced to be online when they redeem their loyalty card, this also means they
are forced to synchronize their app with the server.

This approach tolerates a little bit of cheating, but also makes sure we can
lock out a user, if the stats indicate the person is cheating.

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jrubinovitz
I find it interesting how on the pricing page one of the selling points is "No
advanced technology No technology at the Point of Sale. Set-up is simple,
print once and your loyalty program is ready to go. Sign-up completely online
in 10 minutes or less." While this a turn off for me, I'm a technology person,
so I guess for some markets simple is better.

Other than that, I love the marketing here. It feels very simple, clean, and
honest, like the product (hopefully, I haven't tried it).

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ashleyw
It's weird seeing a Google product with "SaaS pricing":
<http://getpunchd.com/pricing>

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knodi
Can't I just take a picture of the QR code and scan it as many time as I want,
without purchasing anything?

~~~
fomojola
From their page:

"Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program.
GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things
secure."

Velocity analysis. Sounds complicated. Wonder how well it actually works.

~~~
buro9
Hard to know what to say here, but we (Yell Labs) have built what appears to
be the exact same solution to this problem that punchd have.

As far as I can tell we started at around the same time but from London, UK.
And we have our own patent applications (that I was unhappy about submitting
because I don't agree that they were non-obvious, and that punchd did the same
thing elsewhere at the same time is evidence of that).

Anyhow... how do we, with what appears to be exactly the same solution, handle
security?

Signals, lots of them. What sensors does the phone have? Great, grab it all
and start comparing for deviations and against thresholds. When you have
enough data start machine learning against it.

With velocity, look at the X,Y,Z of the gravity sensor and see if the numbers
since the last QR scan indicate that you're moving at beyond a certain G...
clearly scanning a QR code shouldn't require speed.

Then you've got things like, if you scanned in London, could you scan in
Birmingham 5 minutes later? What's the likely speed between places.

Did a scan happen at 2am? The rest of the data suggests that they're closed at
that hour.

And more subtle ones: If all of the compass readings for a specific branch
point within a 15 degree range... you can actually know that they have a
single cashpoint and the customer is on the South side of it.

As for whether they work, they're very effective against obviously fake stuff,
and then together with other signals create a reasonably high confidence of
finding the extremely doubtful stuff. You really want to handle this
delicately as the thing you don't want to do is make it really uncomfortable
for the small business owner if he suspects someone of fraud... so you want to
catch them and deduct the fake points before they enter the shop, but
confidently enough that you don't hurt a genuine customer at all.

It's really easy to sit down and create a whole load of tests against a new
scan just by looking at a wealth of data from old scans.

I hope they haven't patented that aspect, it's pretty damn obvious.

~~~
cloudwalking
We are using a lot of signals too. GPS is the only one we talk about :)

You're right, it is a very delicate line between catching as many cheaters as
possible while avoiding false-positives. We like to err on the side of false-
negatives as much as possible.

~~~
buro9
The ultimate thing of course is: Prove the customer was in the shop and making
a purchase.

And I'm sure you've also looked into whether the QR code could be generated
per transaction (they could be, but does this place too high a cost-burden on
the merchant and if a new device is used to display the generated codes is
that going to meet local food hygiene standards for food outlets - and if
existing devices are used such as printing on the receipts of their EPOS, is
that accommodated by EPOS software).

We also looked into watermarking some signal from a sensor to prove that they
were there, then we discovered Shopkick doing this with their noise emitter (a
novel approach). We're unsure whether this is the best approach (requires
another power point in the merchant, a mount point, installation, and if the
emitted signal is dynamic then it requires a connection).

It's an interesting thing for sure... the best thing we've done to date is
launch in a student bar with an alcohol deal, there is _nothing_ that
generates great data for security like letting compsci students hammer it with
the reward of free beer. It's effectively our bug bounty... defeat our system
and get a beer (or several) and strongly incentivises us to not have them
defeat it.

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ryanschmidt
I find it interesting that the promo video says there's "no software to
download" yet you need the mobile app to use it. Accidental slip up?

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callmeed
So excited Google is keeping Punchd going.

SLO and Cal Poly represent!

~~~
cloudwalking
Have you used Punchd in SLO? It's all over!

~~~
callmeed
Yeah, my office is downtown and we have our normal lunch rotation. Petra is
the main place I've used it.

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i386
Yet another Google launch that is US only (Well at least not available in
Australia).

Google - people outside the US exist and we want to use your stuff!

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clowder
Looks like a fun product! Anyone know of any UK based businesses using it?

