Access Cruises Past 150,000 Mobile Coupon Merchant Locations

The battle is on for the local merchant.

Daily deals are calling them. Coupon marketers are calling them. Online marketers. Advertising agencies. Solution providers.

Everyone wants to get in with these merchants because people actually spend money there. It isn't hard to get a deal from a national .com brand, but over 90% of discretionary dollars are spent in-store at places within 20 miles of home. Get enough local places on your discount program and people will use it. Get places like those to accept your mobile wallet and you'll see adoption rise.

As our own Kelly Passey said in a Loyalty360 article earlier this year, merchants are the kingmakers. Where the merchants go, so goes the people who spend their money with them every day.

So many ventures are staking their success on squeezing a few bucks out of these merchants' already thin margins, yet so few actually offer anything of value in return. The result? Skeptical merchants are no longer the easy sale they may have been just two years ago.

Merchant relationships are critical, and they're arguably our most important asset here at Access. There's a reason we're able to claim both the biggest "traditional" private coupon network and mobile coupon network - we have teams dedicated to working with them, helping them actually generate new business, and have proven ourselves repeatedly for nearly 30 years now.

We're proud to announce that our mobile coupon network has surpassed the 150,000 location mark. Check out the official release here.

Instant Mobile Relevance

Just four years ago we saw the way consumers were flocking to smartphones and how brands were desperately trying to figure out how to stay in front of their customers on these devices. By the time we unveiled our network in 2011, we had already devoted two years to building a collection of merchants and the My Deals Mobile app so clients could give it to their customers without having to build an app of their own.

It debuted as the largest private mobile coupon network in the nation, and that's still where it sits today. What does it mean? Any company with an interest in earning more mobile engagement or revenue can connect with 150,000 merchant locations almost overnight.

Even better, it continues to grow in relevance as technology improves. Apple, PayPal, Qualcomm and others have announced proximity-based "beacon" technologies in the past few weeks. The Access mobile network was built in part with these systems in mind, not to mention the dozens of competing mobile wallets, and brands who are just looking to earn a little mobile engagement and good will.