Prepaid provider, Green Dot, today announced that it is acquiring Loopt, a location-based mobile rewards provider, for $43.4 million. This is an interesting new angle for a company operating in the prepaid market. To date, we’ve seen things like prepaid top-up or reload via a mobile device, prepaid as a payment option in a mobile wallet, or mobile access to prepaid balances and mobile banking-like functionality. But this acquisition goes a step further in that Green Dot has announced its intention to become a significant player in the delivery of mobile point of sale applications. Feature/functionality built around a payment option can create a compelling value proposition for the consumer and will be central to driving the success of mobile POS payment. Loopt’s loyalty applications, and its intellectual property – patents for real time mobile marketing in the context of location-based messaging – can be integrated to help build recurring use of Green Dot’s prepaid options as well as the company’s extensive reload network and services. Will that be enough to vault Green Dot into a leadership position in the market for mobile POS payment? Let’s say it will be a good start and a competitive offering, but there are many contestants in this race, and they are still lining up at the starting blocks.
via Javelin
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