Coffee drinkers around Australia are about to get better integration with their loyalty rewards cards, with Sydney based company Beat the Q announcing that they’ve acquired loyalty card platform eCoffeeCard, a platform that digitses the free coffee cards you get from various cafes.
Beat the Q is a Sydney based startup which uses an App to order and pay for a coffee digitally, saving you the time of standing around waiting to order. They’re supported by one of the larger coffee chains Gloria Jeans with new vendors encouraged to sign up as well. The Beat the Q app does indeed store your loyalty cards, but the reach of Beat the Q will extend with the acquisition of the eCoffeeCard platform reaching another 1,600 cafes and 320,000 users.
The plan is to slowly integrate the Apps in different ways, with the loyalty rewards from eCoffeeCard being brought over to Beat the Q in time, Adam Theobald, CEO and co-founder says
Over 12 months we will integrate ECC and Beat the Q in different ways – the key here is loyalty will always remain free to the cafe and customer. It is their loyalty scheme, and we think it should be free. The idea is for universal loyalty, it doesn’t matter if the customer is using Beat the Q or eCoffeeCard, the customer has one collection of loyalty.
The eCoffeeCard platform is currently available on Android, iOS and Windows Phone, with Beat the Q available on Android, iOS and Blackberry. Blackberry support will be continued after the acquisition, but Beat the Q also has plans for expanding availability into Windows Phone 8 down the track.
With the acquisition, staff from eCoffeeCard will work with Beat the Q to transition the platform, but ultimately the platform will be integrated into Beat the Q, with staff from Beat the Q managing it completely.
The Beat the Q app is free to download from Google Play (or iTunes or Blackberry World), try it out now.
I think I downloaded this once to get the first coffee free. 😛
Installed it ages ago and set it up but never claimed my free coffee – did it yesterday – was so easy I actually topped some credit into it so I can do it again.