July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

ShopSavvy’s new look is paying off in a big way.

The company officially launched a redesigned version of its mobile shopping app for iOS today, which also incorporates new product discovery features for the first time (previously, you’d have to know exactly what you’re looking for in its apps). The new app not only looks better — it’s also led to a significant increase in user engagement among early testers, ShopSavvy revealed to us.

The amount of lists people created within ShopSavvy increased by 291 percent, while the products added to those lists grew by 555 percent. Additionally, the company said that daily sessions increased by 26 percent, and acccount creation has jumped by 44 percent.

“We have a lot of users who really wanted a discovery experience as well,” said ShopSavvy cofounder and CEO John Boyd. “The challenge was coming up with an experience that works for discovery as well as direct search.”

Previously, ShopSavvy looked like a typical price comparison application. Now it’s an intriguing blend of comparison and product browsing. There’s a new menu on the left that suggests products that you may like, and you can easily drag products into your lists and bookmarks. Doing just about anything in the new app feels effortless — so those new engagement figures make sense.

ShopSavvy first dabbled in product discovery when it launched an iPad app last December. Clearly, the company’s experience building that app has informed the redesigned iPhone experience.

Another big addition to the new ShopSavvy app is the ability to list products that don’t have UPC tags. This will allow the company to offer price comparison for a wider variety of products, and it could also be useful for local merchants, Boyd tells me.

ShopSavvy has offices in San Francisco and Dallas and has thus far raised a total of $11.5 million.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In its ongoing effort to become a universal payment service, PayPal is today launching a new service that should simplify shopping on mobile websites.

Dubbed “Log in with PayPal,” the service lets you easily sign in with your PayPal credentials to avoid the pain of filling out shipping and payment information on your mobile screen. (It was previously known as PayPal Access during its beta testing phase.) For merchants, Log in with PayPal also serves as a way to verify a buyer’s identity.

The service is “all about building trust between buyers and sellers,” said Damon Houglands, senior director of identity at PayPal, in an interview with VentureBeat.

Log in with PayPal could also help merchants complete more sales through mobile. According to Houglands, nearly half of users end up leaving shopping sites if they can’t remember their account passwords and a quarter abandon their carts because they’re frustrated with entering shopping information on a tiny screen.

It should also be easy for developers to implement, since it relies on the same open web technologies like OAuth and JSON, as well as the REST technology used in PayPal’s new APIs.

PayPal’s eventual goal is to let you make mobile purchases simply by entering your 4-digit PayPal PIN number on a website, Houglands tells me. For now, you still have to actually log into a mobile site with your PayPal credentials, which could be either your PayPal login or your mobile number and PIN. Either way, it’s still better than pecking in your credit card information by hand.

While Log in with PayPal is only a mobile web solution now, developers can still implement it within their native iOS apps. When I asked if PayPal was considering a way to offer the service across native apps completely (something that would be particularly useful on iOS), Houglands hinted that PayPal is considering that functionality.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

What if your smartphone was actually smart enough to know the exact product you’re standing in front of in a store, without any help from your part? Or what if it could automatically receive offers related to what you’re watching on TV?

It’s possible to do those things today, but it requires more work than most brands want to deal with. New York City-based Sonic Notify thinks it has the best solution for marketers and consumers alike.

The company has developed a way to embed content within high-frequency audio, allowing your smartphone to receive relevant offers and notifications simply by “listening” to the sound around you. Sonic Notify also announced today that the U.S. Patent Office has awarded its audio watermarking technology with Patent No. 8,401,569 (it’s currently waiting for two more patents to clear).

“[Our technology] lets companies talk to consumers right at the point of interaction,” said Sonic Notify chief executive Jonathan Glanz in an interview with VentureBeat.

So, for example, a store could have Sonic Notify’s signal running through its PA system to push a welcome message straight to your phone when you walk in (assuming you’re running the store’s app). Once you’re in an aisle, Sonic Notify’s tiny devices can also send you additional content as you’re deciding between different brands of cereal. The company’s technology can also be embedded within TV commercials or shows to push offers, or to simply note that you’ve seen a specific commercial.

It’s sort of like Google Analytics for the real world, Glanz tells me. Brands will be able to track how consumers interact with their marketing and products right from the beginning (e.g., an ad during prime time TV), right up until the point they buy the product. And of course, it unlocks a wealth of data in between those two interactions as well, like telling brands if you’ve actually scoped out their products within stores.

“We can now show the entire pass of the consumer’s ad user experience,” Glanz said.

I know, it sounds terrifying. Especially since it’s well-positioned to be adopted by retailers, since it costs only $150 to outfit a store with Sonic Notify’s technology, compared with around $10,000 for Wi-Fi consumer tracking solutions.

We’ve already seen similar in-store marketing efforts from companies like ShopKick, which uses in-store devices to deliver offers to your phone. But since Sonic Notify’s core technology spans more than just the retail experience, it could potentially offer brands a wealth of information about consumers.

Glanz promises that the offers and notifications will be “extremely targeted” and a “really controlled experience,” and he noted that the company is working with the North American Privacy Commission to prove it’s using consumer data in good faith.

The company has been talking about its technology for more than a year now, but now that it has its first patent locked in, we’ll likely see it popping up in many more locations. Ganz hinted that some deals were in the works with some popular apps and retailers, but he wasn’t able to talk about anything specifically. Not surprisingly, the company is also building up its own ad network, as well as well as a variety of analytics offerings.

It’s not hard to imagine how this sort of technology could be used outside of simple marketing. Ganz tells me that the company was also working on implementing it inside of New York City’s buses, which could ultimately be used to give us a crowd-sourced, real-time map of the bus system’s performance. That project never got off the ground, but expect to see even more creative uses of the company’s tech down the line.

Sonic Notify launched in 2011 and has so far raised around $4.25 million from Raptor Group, A-Grade Investments, and others. Glanz also poured $400,00 of his own funds to get the company off the ground.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s ramping up mobile monetization today with a new sponsored search result ad type, a product listing ad. It also reduces the mobile search presence of the showroomer’s biggest ally: Amazon.com.

Already available on desktop, the new ad type will now be available globally on mobile, Google says. Similar to desktop Google shopping ads, the ad appears when people search for a shopping-related term like ‘washing machine’ or ‘Tassim0.’

People who see the ad can tap a product to learn more and potentially buy it, or tap the “Shop on Google” link to browse other options on Google Shopping, which are sponsored results paid for by merchants. Or, they can narrow their search criteria by price, location, and availability.

The new ad type will ramp up Google monetization efforts on mobile while also providing more advertising options for business. But it’s also a continuation of a somewhat controversial campaign that some have said is trending towards paid search results, which Google said in its IPO it will never do.

This ad type also lends itself perfectly to the practice of showrooming, which is checking out products in a bricks-and-mortar store while looking for the best prices online.

And it’s yet another shot across the bow of Amazon.com, which owns online retailing in the U.S. and also ranks very high in most product searches. This is one more way Google can get closer to merchants directly, reduce Amazon’s sales and search power, and benefit financially to boot.

Google is hosting a webinar tomorrow, March 14th, in which it will unveil more about the new ad option.

photo credit: edkohler via photopin cc

While some may still balk at entering credit card information to buy something on a smartphone, it seems the fashion community has taken to it like a pair of peep-toes and a good pedi.

Poshmark, the used-fashion mobile marketplace, says people are uploading $1 million in inventory each day, and launched an iPad app to take advantage of the growth.

“Since the listings will be viewed in a larger format and browsing becomes more seamless, we do expect to see Poshmarkers making faster purchases and more of them,” said Manish Chandra, founder and chief executive of Poshmark, in an email to VentureBeat.

Poshmark allows anyone to upload listing of various fashion items for sale. This includes worn items to items that are still new with tags. The app focuses on photos and curates the listings into “Posh parties,” or themed mobile “events” where people can contribute their items in hopes of striking a deal with a more targeted buyer.

Chandra explained that in the last 100 days alone, the app has grown ten times in terms of its run rate in the last three months and is looking toward having $350 million in inventory uploaded this year alone. At the end of last year, the company was only projecting a $100 million run rate.

Because of how photo-focused the app is, I am surprised that it took Poshmark this long to come out with an iPad app. The Menlo Park-based company was launched in 2011 and was originally only available on the iPhone. Now, the company has expanded to the Web, though you cannot attend posh parties on the website.

“We spent a lot of time carefully redesigning some of the most-popular sections of the Poshmark iPhone app in order to maximize the iPad’s screen, including the main news feed, our Posh Party feed, and user profiles,” said Chandra.

With the iPad app also comes the new ability to search for items by size — a desperately needed feature in an app that truly does have thousands of submissions to weed through.

Poshmark recently received a $12 million round of funding from Menlo Park Ventures, and will likely put more fund and energy into updating the app after receiving user feedback. We can also expect to see Poshmark come to Android soon, which will likely create the infrastructure that could make it an international business.

Images via Poshmark

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Chances are good that you’re guilty of showrooming, or scoping out a product in a physical retail store before buying it online (likely at a significant discount). Now a new study from the location analytics company Placed shows which retailers are most at risk for showrooming from Amazon customers — and the results might surprise you.

In “Aisle to Amazon: How Amazon is impacting brick-and-mortar retailers,” Placed found that showrooming affects Bed Bath & Beyond, Petsmart, and Toys “R” Us more than other retailers typically associated with the phenomenon, like Best Buy and Target.

The study is based on 14,925 survey responses in the U.S., coupled with nearly 1 billion location data points measured by Placed across the country in January. With the proliferation of smartphones, price-matching apps, and other tools, showrooming is one of the biggest concerns for traditional retailers.

“Amazon was the clear winner in e-commerce 1.0, and unless brick-and-mortar retailers shift from reactive to proactive, Amazon will win e-commerce 2.0 on the backs of offline retailers,” said David Shim, Placed’s founder and chief executive. “All the attention to date has been on Target and Best Buy as the early victims of showrooming, but significantly more retailers are at risk. Retailers need to know that it’s not a question of if or when showrooming will impact their business, as an aisle to Amazon is already in their store.”

As you can see from the chart, Bed Bath & Beyond faced a 27 percent higher risk of showrooming than the average, while Petsmart had a 25 percent risk. In comparison, showroomers were only 20 percent more likely to visit Best Buy and 15 percent more likely to visit Target.

Both Best Buy and Target recently announced that they would match prices from online stores, a clear sign that they’re ready to take on the issue of showroomers. Placed’s study shows that plenty of other retailers will need to follow in their footsteps.

Here are a few other intriguing details from the report:

• Users of Amazon’s Price Check app were 53 percent more likely to visit T.J. Maxx than the average consumer and 49 percent more likely to visit Costco.
• Wal-Mart was relatively safe from showroomers — they were 10 percent to 15 percent less likely to visit Wal-Mart, compared to Target and Best Buy.
• At the same time, Wal-Mart is the most popular destination for Amazon customers (not just showroomers); 25.2 percent of Amazon customers surveyed visited a Wal-Mart store in January. Target was a distant second at just 10.7 percent of Amazon customers.

Photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In the battle between made-up consumer holidays, it looks like Black Friday still reigns supreme on mobile devices.

When it comes to increases in usage, mobile apps from Amazon, Newegg, and Gilt all saw significantly higher gains on Black Friday compared to Cyber Monday, according to data compiled by the mobile data compression company Onavo.

The findings throw some water on the hype from eBay and Paypal, which were trying to make the term “Mobile Monday” replace Cyber Monday given the performance on their apps. Onavo’s data, which is compiled anonymously from more than 100,000 US iPhone owners running the company’s compression app, shows that eBay’s mobile app did see a rise on Cyber Monday — but for other popular shopping apps, that was far from the case.

For example, Amazon saw a 222 percent increase in app usage on Black Friday, compared to a 171 percent bump on Cyber Monday. And Gilt saw a massive increase of 185 percent last Friday, compared to 87 percent on Monday.

No matter what you think of annoying shopping holidays, it’s hard to deny the increasing importance of mobile shopping for online retailers.

There once was a time when the biggest shopping scams were overpriced department stores and fake purses. But now shoppers should be on alert for Cyber Monday, which creates a whole new arena for ripping you off.

“All signs point to 2012 being the biggest year yet for scammers,” said Mark Risher, the chief executive of business security provider Impermium, in an email to VentureBeat. “In the week leading up to Cyber Monday, we’ve already seen a five-time increase in the amount of shopping-related spam across social networks.”

Cyber Monday is a term the National Retail Federation created in 2005 to call attention to all the online shopping you’ll probably be doing on the Monday after Thanksgiving, when you’re back at work and failing to be productive. Over time, it’s turned into a semi-big deal, with lots of discounts, coupons, and other bargains.

Cyber criminals go where the money is and where the easiest targets are, and Cyber Monday brings both of these together. People are on the hunt for good deals, and they are prepared to spend their dollars. It’s an ideal opportunity for a criminal to slip in and get you to click on a fake deal — the Internet equivalent to “Psst, hey, there are some Louis Vuitton bags down that alleyway.”

Indeed, social media is going to be hit hard with fake deals and likely even viruses that spread messages heralding savings. Criminals like to target social media because you inherently trust posts from your friends. If they can post a status to your friend’s Facebook wall on your behalf, he’s likely to believe it’s you that posted the status update, and click the link.

Pinterest users should also watch out. We saw a rash of Pinterest scams in March in which clicking a picture on its network leads to a spammy website. Since then, Pinterest is doing better at blocking these websites. It also tells you if you are being redirected to a different site when you click on a pin. Still, click with care.

Shoppers should be wary of public Wi-Fi hotspots. With smartphones today, a lot of people shop in malls, doing comparison shopping. According to a study by security company McAfee, 73 percent of Americans feel comfortable using public Wi-Fi, and 54 percent of Americans plan on using their phones to shop this holiday season. But you never know who is snooping the traffic on that hotspot that advertises itself as “free public Wi-Fi,” collecting all the data you’re transmitting.

Be sure to only make payments over a secure Internet connection to avoid getting your information — and maybe even identity — stolen.

According to Risher, the concerns about mobile shopping don’t end there.

“Mobile devices present an extra problem, because the small screens make it difficult for users to see where a link is leading” unlike on a desktop browser, where users can hover over the link to see its true destination, Risher said. “In these circumstances, users should be extremely cautious about entering their username or password on any pages they reach through a click. When in doubt, always browse to the site directly or use a bookmark to ensure against phishing and fraud.”

Bitdefender, a Romanian anti-virus company, says shoppers should look out for any offers of a “Platinum Card for Cyber Monday” advertisements. These are fake and infect the computer with malware when clicked.

If you do fall for one of these scams, Risher says to pay close attention to your credit card statements for any unusual activity.

“In addition, customers should ensure their anti-virus software is up-to-date and running regularly, as many shady sites can also harbor viruses and malware,” Bitdefender advises.

Hacker image via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba shocked the web with news that its subsidiaries Taobao (like a Chinese eBay) and T-mall (like Amazon) sold a massive $3.06 billion in product in a single 24-hour period.

Three billion dollars is almost triple the entire 2011 Black Friday sales of e-commerce sites in the United States, and this is a testament to both the growing maturity of the Chinese online market and the central position Alibaba holds in China.

So how do you do $3 billion in sales in a single day? I interviewed an Alibaba spokesperson, who preferred to remain unnamed, to find out.

Almost as many users as Twitter

First of all, it helps to have users — lots of them.

The two sites, Taobao.com and Tmall.com, share a combined user base of half a billion registered users. That’s only about 30 percent of the total Chinese population, which means that Alibaba has a long runway for continued growth as the Chinese middle class continues to grow — and suggesting that a $10 billion day is not out of the realm of possibility in years to come.

Some of the goods for sale on Taobao.

(It also means, by the way, that it might be crazy for Yahoo to sell its stake in Alibaba now. Yahoo still owns 23 percent of the Chinese e-commerce giant after pocketing $7.6 billion U.S from selling almost half its original stake. Down the road, however, it might be like owning a 23 percent of Google, or Facebook … times 10.)

Both Taobao.com and Tmall process payments via Alipay, Alibaba’s payments processor. Alipay has over 700 million user accounts, presumably all with credit card payment information, as of mid-2012.

A cultural sea change

When you’re looking to scale quickly, it helps to be a high-growth company in a high-growth industry in a high-growth country.

But while a huge number of users is necessary, it’s insufficient to generate such massive cash flow. Just as important is a change in Chinese consumer behavior toward e-commerce “increasingly becoming a primary shopping channel,” according to Alibaba. The entire industry has had double-digit growth year-over-year — since 2010 e-commerce in China has enjoyed an average 10 percent quarter to quarter growth rate — and Alibaba is outpacing the industry.

In addition to a general acceptance of e-commerce as perhaps the first option for shopping, Chinese consumers have been increasingly prone to spend big on “double sticks day,” 11/11. Also referred to as “singles’ day,” Nov. 11 has taken on a rough similarity to our Valentine’s Day. Singles try hard to not be single, couples celebrate that they are couples, and probably many more people are simply happy to dogpile any opportunity to shop big and save big, much like Black Friday in the U.S.

Stores galore

Users and demand are great, but you need supply. That is not a problem for Alibaba, as the representative said that Tmall hosts e-commerce operations for 50,000 companies, while Taobao manages online sales and payments and “several million,” most of whom are likely individuals buying and selling much as we see on eBay here.

Of those stores, 10,000 took part in the 11/11 festivities with special sales and promotions. That’s five times the number that participated just last year, which gave Chinese shoppers “access to an even wider range of products.”

Promotion helped too, Alibaba says:

“We also offered new functions, activities and games via the event landing page beginning mid-October and noticed that many online shoppers were visiting the site and browsing through participating stores and available products as well as adding products to their shopping carts.”

Let’s get technical

While I generally like to ask companies for technical details about their server setup, Alibaba was anxious not

to share too much information that might be construed as proprietary, saying only that Alibaba Cloud Computing manages all Taobao and Tmall’s infrastructure from three data centers in Beijing, Hangzhou and California.

It also preferred not to disclose what kind of servers it runs, including operating system and webserver details, but a quick search reveals that Alibaba uses Tengine for webserving, which is a 100 percent compatible fork from the increasingly popular Nginx server, and that Alibaba runs, as expected, on Linux.

Mobile buyers figured prominently in Alibaba’s monster day, with one in four Taobao users accessing the site from a smartphone or a tablet. That compares to one in six last year.

Summing up

A $3 billion day doesn’t happen all the time, even in the world’s most populous country. And it’s a huge proportion of Alibaba’s annual goal for Taobao and Tmall, which was one trillion RMB in 2012. That’s closing in on $15 billion U.S., which is serious money.

Given Alibaba’s trajectory and China’s growth, it would seem that a $4 billion or $5 billion day would not be out of the question in 2013.

photo credit: dcmaster via photopin cc, Autorun！ via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Shopsavvy is about to get a lot more useful for Best Buy shoppers. The two companies will announce tomorrow that the Shopsavvy mobile app, which you can use to scan and compare items from retail and online stores, has tapped into Best Buy’s API to let you research items faster and make purchases from the retailer’s online store.

Best Buy is already working with ShopSavvy to bring its product information and reviews into the mobile app, but this integration with the company’s BBYOpen API is a major step forward. Now you’ll be able to search for items on ShopSavvy within a Best Buy store and get them shipped to you within a few clicks. And thanks to the API integration, searching all of Best Buy’s data is much faster. (In-store pickup for purchases isn’t available yet, but that will likely appear down the line.)

“We really try to bring our products to where customers are,” Steve Bendt, the director of Best Buy’s emerging platforms (the group behind the BBYOpen API), told VentureBeat in an interview. He pointed out that partnering with apps like ShopSavvy is a major growth area for Best Buy, and the company has also built up a strong developer network taking advantage of the API.

“There’s more choice than ever today in how you shop for things,” Bendt said. “We need to be there. We’ve got an amazing store network that provides realtime fulfillment that we’re taking advantage of.”

The Shopsavvy app also offers mobile purchasing within its app from retailers such as Walmart, Home Depot, and Barnes & Noble.

The app started out as a simple price-comparison tool on Android, but it has since grown into one of the most popular options for mobile shopping on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. The ShopSavvy app has been downloaded more than 40 million times and has more than 10 million active users, the company claims. ShopSavvy is also exploring new territory with its mobile app — earlier this year it launched a mobile marketplace to take on Craigslist.

ShopSavvy has offices in San Francisco and Dallas and has thus far raised a total of $11.5 million. Its latest funding round was led by Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The rising popularity of mobile shopping apps is leading to entirely new consumer behaviors, according to a joint report by mobile data compression company Onavo and IDC.

Based on anonymous data from U.S. iPhone users running Onavo’s app, the company found that mobile price comparison apps like ShopSavvy, eBay’s RedLaser, and Amazon’s PriceCheck are mostly used on Saturdays. Mobile retail apps, where purchases are made, have consistent usage throughout the week, with Sundays and Mondays as their most high-transaction days.

The findings could be intriguing to retailers, as they could easily target consumers comparing prices on Saturday and prime them to make a purchase on Sundays. The power of Saturday price comparisons is likely carrying through to Mondays as well — a day that normally isn’t considered very strong for shopping (except for the made-up “Cyber Monday” shopping holiday).

Onavo also unearthed some interesting statistics about popular price comparison apps. In particular, eBay’s RedLaser app has been downloaded more than three times as much as Amazon’s PriceCheck on the iPhone. But the PriceCheck app still leads when it comes to usage, at 2.3 days a month. ShopSavvy is in second place at 2 days a month, and RedLaser is slightly lower at 1.9 days. Onavo notes that since most price comparison apps are only used around twice a month, there’s plenty of room for growth.

In its comparison of retail apps, Onavo says that pharmacy chain Walgreens is currently leading other retailers in adoption and usage, while Walmart has the most consistent usage throughout the week.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Today’s shoppers likely spend more time looking at their smartphones than weekly in-store circulars. Hoping to take advantage of this new trend, intent marketing company LocalResponse and ShopLocal, which helps stores digitize their circulars, have joined forces for what could be the next step in shopping.

Using LocalResponse’s real-time consumer intent data (based on check-ins and social media posts about specific stores and brands), retailers will be able to push ads to consumers’ smartphones that point to in-store discounts, coupons, and loyalty rewards, all powered by ShopLocal’s SmartCircular product.

Think of it like this: Instead of poring over a paper circular every week, you’ll be able to check into a store and receive the best deals relevant to you.

“We’re putting the circular into the hands of a mobile savvy, social savvy shopper, [who] may have never seen the printed circular,” LocalResponse president and co-founder Kathy Leake told VentureBeat in an interview yesterday.

Leake says LocalResponse will deliver the ads in two ways: If you mention a company on Twitter, you’ll receive a response that links to a relevant retailer landing page. Even more impressive, you’ll see banner ads in some mobile apps that can expand and show you the store’s circular. (The latter feature is only available in-app currently, but Leake says it will be available for the mobile web by the fourth quarter.)

I asked if any consumers were weirded out by this very direct ad targeting, but Leake said the response has been overwhelmingly positive. She said that consumers realize their check-in data and social media posts are public (unless they’ve been locked down). Additionally, LocalResponse is very careful to share intent data only with the relevant brand (so a check-in at Macy’s won’t be seen by any competitors).

Leake tells me that LocalResponse is looking at an annual revenue run-rate of $6 million this year. In a February interview, LocalResponse CEO Nihal Mehta also pointed to some optimistic findings: “Our bookings in January exceeded our revenue for all of last year,” he said. “We’re looking to double our staff this year and stay cash-flow positive. The goal is to reach profitablity by the end of 2012.”

LocalResponse is based in New York City and has raised $6 million since it was founded in 2007. Investors include Verizon Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Cava Capital, and others.

Photo: Andrew Archy/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You’ve likely never heard of Giftango, but the provider of a digital gift card platform for retailers and businesses is becoming an increasingly essential company for mobile shopping and e-commerce. Today the company announced that Shopkick, makers of the mobile shopping app that rewards you for walking into stores, has chosen Giftango to power its new digital gift card offering.

Giftango offers a streamlined way for companies to tap into retailer gift card programs — allowing them to access gift card data within apps and other services. Basically, Giftango is powering the move away from traditional gift cards, which can get lost or stolen, and towards gift cards within shopping apps and digital wallets.

With Shopkick, Giftango is going to allow consumers to both receive digital gift cards as rewards and redeem them right from the Shopkick app. Last year Shopkick drove $110 million worth of revenue to its retail partners — simplifying the rewards process will only make it more valuable.

“All of these merchants have different ideas, Giftango has realy been focused on creating a consistency and conformancy in the [gift card] marketplace,” said Giftango founder and CEO David Nelsen in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’ve been pushing one gift card platform across all retailers.”

Giftango’s launch with Shopkick includes retailers like Lowe’s, Chili’s, Papa John’s, and Fandango. The company expects another 14 partners in the coming weeks.

Nelsen tells me that Giftango supports 150 brands, or a “majority of the market,” with its platform, accounting for around $2 billion worth of gift cards. The company has also developed a simple way to convert existing physical gift cards into digital ones — something that could be useful to help retailers and consumers transition to digital.

Gift cards aren’t exactly a sexy topic, but the move towards digital shopping is making them more valuable than ever. We’ve covered the Swedish social gift card startup Wrapp extensively, which has built a successful business with its social gift card plan. As gift cards shed their plastic real-world shells and go entirely digital, they’ll become even more valuable to retailers and consumers alike.

Portland, Oregon-based Giftango was founded in 2005 and has raised $13 million so far. The company has 50 employees, but Nelsen tells me it plans to double that number within the next 8 to 10 months as it expands its international operations.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Oh, how the times have changed for ShopSavvy. When the barcode-scanning app first launched on Android in 2008, hundreds of retailers had refused to give up their pricing and inventory data to it. Now that ShopSavvy has proven itself as a valuable mobile shopping tool with over 10 million users, it has amassed a backlog of around 1,500 retailers eager to jump onto its platform.

Aiming to reduce that backlog and make it even easier for new stores to get onboard ShopSavvy, the company is today introducing ShopSavvy Marketplace, which will allow retailers to add their own inventory data to ShopSavvy’s big-data platform, dubbed ProductCloud.

ShopSavvy was among the first apps to let consumers scan barcodes in stores and compare prices among multiple retailers. Consumers love it because it helps them save money, but retailers have also warmed up to the service since it can drive more traffic to their stores. Even if their prices aren’t always lower than competitors, by supporting ShopSavvy retailers have a direct connection to informed shoppers. ShopSavvy also sells ads within its app, allowing retailers and brands to target deals and sales to specific consumers.

So why is ShopSavvy Marketplace so important? Previously, ShopSavvy’s engineers added retailer information to its database manually, a process which has become increasingly unwieldy as the company has grown to over 40,000 retailers in four years.

“Probably around Christmas they realized we had 1,500 [companies] in the backlog and realized they were never going to catch up,” said ShopSavvy co-founder and CEO Alexander Muse, in an interview with VentureBeat. The backlog has been particularly tough for ShopSavvy’s international markets, as it hasn’t been able to add a new retailer in Europe, Asia, or South America in the past year. (Though he notes that recent investor Eduardo Saverin has helped the company expand “significantly” in Asian markets, particularly China and Japan.)

Muse likens ShopSavvy Marketplace to a “self-checkout line for retailers.” Now any retailer, no matter how big or small, can add their prices, inventory, and location data to ShopSavvy without the wait. ShopSavvy accepts retailer data around 14 different ways — including batch files and XML files — so they won’t have to worry about reformatting anything. “We wanted to reduce inertia and have them give us the data as it exists,” Muse said.

Intriguingly, ShopSavvy is also helping retailers to make sense of their jumbled inventory data. Walmart currently has around 8 sources of inventory data that it juggles, Muse tells me, and now that it’s sending all of that to ShopSavvy, it finally has a single location to view that data. This is the promise of big data in action: making sense of a tidal wave of data using the cloud.

ShopSavvy Marketplace is going to entirely replace the need for engineers to babysit new retailer data. The company expects to see a slew of new European and Asian retailers jumping onto its platform now that the process is more streamlined. Given current estimates, Muse tells me that ShopSavvy could potentially add another 40,000 retailers by the end of this year (for a total of 80,000).

Looking forward, Muse says that he envisions ShopSavvy going from a great utility today to “more of a platform or community for shopping, both for consumers and retailers.” The company has upgraded its database infrastructure from SQL to a combination of Hadoop and Cassandra, which means that it can now devour tons of information in true big data fashion.

“Now we can take this big data from retailers and help discover new insights,” Muse said. For example, he points out that the company’s data shows Amazon only has the best price for products around 6 percent of the time — information which could send consumers to other retailers instead.

The company recently launched SavvyListings, an attempt to create a mobile Craigslist-like market for mobile devices. Muse reiterated that the company is planning to integrate buy-back features into the  services (using the same firm that powers popular reseller Gazelle), and he teased that there are some interesting announcements around SavvyListings to come.

ShopSavvy has offices in San Francisco, Calif. and Dallas, Texas, and has thus far raised a total of $11.5 million.

Nirvanix nabs $25M from Khosla Ventures

Enterprise storage startup Nirvanix has raised $25 million in its third round of funding, with the goal of bringing enterprise cloud storage to the largest companies in the world. Nirvanix offers its more than 1,200 customers across the globe access to cloud storage in three forms. These include public, hybrid, and private cloud storage types. The new funding round was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from existing investors Valhalla Partners, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures, and Windward Ventures.

LifeStreet Media nabs $66M

Advertising startup LifeStreet Media has raised $66 million in funding. LifeStreet Media offers an in-app advertising solution for mobile and Facebook apps. Nautic Partners led the round for the previously stealth-mode startup.

Evernote raises $70M in advance of IPO, now worth $1B

Evernote has raised $70 million at a valuation of $1 billion in its fourth round of funding. The round was led by Meritech Capital and CBC Capital. Evernote offers a suite of digital note-taking products with the goal of helping you remember everything.

WePay raises $10M

Payment processing service WePay has raised $10 million in funding, the company announced today. WePay is known for its easy, anyone-can-use-it online payment tools, aimed at individuals and “unsophisticated” online sellers. Ignition Partners led the round, with existing investors Highland Capital Partners and August Capital participating.

Fiverr grabs $15M in seed money

Online “people-for-hire” marketplace  Fiverr has raised $15 million in seed funding from Accel Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. The company lets people list their performance services, such as singing or juggling, on the site and starts the pricing at $5 a gig.

NetPlenish secures $1.9M

Mobile shopping site NetPlenish has raised $1.9 million in seed funding. The company helps you get a deal on everyday products, such as toilet paper or soap, by using smartphone apps. Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Gold Hill Capital, BHV Capital, TEEC Angel Fund, Ludlow Ventures led the round.

Counting money image via Flickr user Mr Jan

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

There’s no doubt that mobile payments are generating plenty of hype among the tech community, but how long will it be until they go mainstream?

65 percent of experts surveyed by the Pew Research Center agreed with a statement that said mobile payments would take off by 2020, according a new report released today, “The future of money: Smartphone swiping in the digital age.” 33 percent of experts agreed with a more negative statement, which said that consumers wouldn’t trust mobile payments to replace cash and credit cards by 2020.

It’s worth noting that those surveyed only had two scenarios to choose from, so there’s additional complexity to consider from the experts. Most of those who said mobile payments will take off, for example, also said that cash and credit cards won’t disappear entirely. Consumers hoping for anonymity, or those simply refuse to change, will likely stick with current methods. But among young and well-off consumers, the convenience of mobile payments will make it the ideal choice.

“For many of these experts, ‘mobile money’ represents more than just existing processes adapted to a new, more portable form factor,” Janna Anderson, director of Elon’s Imagining the Internet Center and a co-author of the study, said in a statement today. “They see this as an opportunity to implement security measures that are lacking in our current financial systems, to offer consumers more control over their spending, and to even reinvent the way we think about the concept of ‘money’. Top people from Microsoft, Nokia and Netflix were among the many who said it is up to those who control transaction systems to set the timetable for adoption.”

Most experts also agreed that, even if mobile payments take off by 2020, it will still be in a transition period that time. Paying by phone isn’t a foreign concept in African and Asian countries, so we’ll likely see those areas continue to innovate with mobile payments before the U.S. and other countries. Some experts also expressed concern that entrenched payment companies would delay the rollout of mobile payments in the U.S.

“When credit cards arrived, checks did not disappear, and neither did money,” said Amber Case, CEO of Geoloqi. “Although in some places  either cash or cards are accepted, there are three main methods of payment. If another  method of payment is added, we will likely have four methods of payment and retailers and  businesses must accept another form of payment. Some systems may emerge that use  completely smart payments, but there will still be other forms of payment available.”

Photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Physical retailers need to stop being afraid of the mobile shopping revolution and play to their strengths instead, a panel of executives told the audience at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit today.

VentureBeat brought together Google’s head of mobile Jason Spero, PayPal’s mobile head Hill Ferguson, and the founder of NeuAer Dave Mathews to discuss the current state of mobile shopping. The big takeaway for brick and mortar retailers? You may not be able to beat online stores when it comes to price, but there’s a lot more that you can offer with a physical presence.

The panelists pointed to high-end retail store experiences like the Apple Store, which offers knowledgeable sales people, the chance to try out products, and (more recently) the ability to check out directly from your phone. Google’s Jason Spero pointed out how a local store could offer additional services to make its consumers overlook higher prices, such as installation for complicated products like grills.

“I think that the definition of a retailer has to change,” Spero said.

But while bigger retailers quake in their boots over the concept of mobile shopping, the execs pointed out how smaller businesses can take advantage of newer payments technologies.

“We’re starting to see small businesses get access to technology and capabilities that are a whole generation ahead of bigger companies,” PayPal’s Hill Ferguson said.

Ferguson pointed out how mobile payments can help to attract sales in commodity products like gas. A new deal between PayPal and the gas station chain Cumberland Farms, for example, will allow customers to pay for gas from their phone. That could be a bonus for consumers during cold winter months.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Forget your girlfriend, your mobile phone is fast becoming a better companion in times of crisis — you know, when you need to score the best deal on that sexy gadget or you’ve left your wallet in the car.

New data from Nielsen shows that nearly one-third of U.S. smartphone owners (29 percent) now turn to their devices for shopping dos and don’ts. And our new-found love affair with our phones is so promising, most of us are ready to close the deal — 71 percent of app downloaders said they’d like to use their phone to pay at the register.

Mobile shoppers, according to Nielsen’s U.S. Digital Consumer Report, are most keen on comparison shopping while in stores and browsing products on their devices. During the third quarter of 2011, 38 percent of smartphone owners turned to their cell phone for both activities. Thirty-two percent used their device to read up on product reviews, 24 percent searched for coupons, and 22 percent actually purchased a product from their mobile pal.

While just 9 percent of mobile shoppers indicated that they used their phone to pay at the register (we’d hazard a guess that a majority are Starbucks customers), 71 percent of app downloaders said they were interested in using their smartphone as a credit card. And iPhone owners showed even more interest; 75 percent expressed interest in paying by iPhone, and 39 percent said they would be extremely or very interested in using an app for that purpose.

These high percentages point to a mobile wallet future we’ve all seen coming and suggests that early entrants like Google and PayPal have large opportunities to capitalize on consumers’ mobile payment desires.

Nielsen’s findings also fall in line with other recent studies, including one from Pew Research Center that found 52 percent of adult cell phone owners used their phone for shopping-related activities over the holidays.

The data serves as further evidence that brick-and-mortar shoppers and mobile shoppers are no longer two disparate entities.

Photo credit: Roger’s Wife/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

Consumers put their digital wallets to work to the tune of $161.5 billion for all of 2011, and $49.7 billion in the last three months alone.

Altogether, e-commerce spending in 2011 was up 13 percent from 2010, with online shopping surging 14 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to market research firm comScore.

“The fourth quarter of 2011 capped off what was yet another strong year for online retail, one in which every quarter achieved double-digit increases versus the prior year,” comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni said. “Price and convenience continue to be the critical value drivers for e-commerce, and unless those conditions change we can expect to see more channel-shifting to online in 2012 and perhaps even an acceleration in the current growth trend.”

Fourth quarter growth was fueled by 10 different $1 billion-plus online spending days, including Cyber Monday which lived up to its name and accounted for $1.251 billion in e-commerce spending, comScore said. The company partially attributed growth to consumers’ growing predilection for shopping via tablet or smartphone, a clear trend for 2011 and beyond.

Consumers also chose not to pass up free shipping offers, as the percentage of e-commerce transactions that included free shipping rose to 52 percent for the year, an all-time high. The “Digital Content & Subscriptions” product category grew by more than 18 percent year-over-year and was one of the top performing categories for the year. Amazon and Apple likely contributed significantly to the trend, as the two companies have sold boatloads of devices for consuming digital media.

Photo credit: 401k/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

More than just a nifty mobile app for consumers, Shopkick is also helping its retail and brand partners generate significant revenue. The company announced today that it drove more than $110 million in revenue to its partners in 2011, its first full year in operation.

The news comes on the heels of Shopkick’s massive growth announcements of 3 million active users and over 1 billion offers viewed. The success of the free Shopkick app, which allows consumers to earn rewards and deals simply by walking into a store, shows how mobile devices are quickly becoming important to in-store shopping in the real world.

“Some mobile services drive people out of stores, not into stores, with online comparison shopping that turn stores into ‘showrooms.’ Shopkick does the opposite,” Shopkick CEO Cyriac Roeding said in a statement today. “It’s a win-win-win between retailers, brands, and consumers.”

The company’s patent-pending technology has now been deployed in over 4,000 stores and 250 malls cross America. Recent partner brands include Old Navy, Disney, and Levi’s.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Shopkick has raised a total of $20 million from Kleiner, Greylock Partners, Reid Hoffman (investing as an individual before he became a partner at Greylock), Citi Growth Ventures & Innovation Group, and Ron Conway’s SV Angel.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Grandma and grandpa may not be doing it, but the rest of us are — and quite frequently at that. Of course, we’re talking about the growing phenomenon of using a cell phone while shopping in stores to look up product prices or reviews.

More than half of all adult cell-phone owners (52 percent) used their phone to either phone a friend, look up product reviews online, or comparison price shop during a 30-day holiday shopping period, according to Pew Research Center, a highly respected nonprofit center that studies the impact of the Internet on people and the world at large.

Pew conducted telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults in the U.S., and detailed its findings in a report on how Americans used their phones to help them shop this past holiday season. While shopping offline, 38 percent of cell owners called a friend for advice, 24 percent looked up online reviews, 25 percent compared prices via their cell phones, and 33 percent, or one third of cell owners, used their mobile device to either check online reviews or pricing information, according to Pew.

“These findings show that the growing availability of smartphones and other mobile devices has dramatically changed the shopping experience,” Pew senior research specialist Aaron Smith said. “Consumers are frequently using their phones to make sure they get the most highly-rated product at the best price, and in many cases they are willing to go elsewhere or delay their purchase until they find the right combination of value and quality.”

Perhaps most telling of this shift in consumer shopping behavior is that of the 33 percent of people who used their phone to look up product information in a store, one in five (19 percent), went on to skip the brick-and-mortar store checkout experience and make their purchase from an online store instead.

Who are these savvy price-conscious mobile shoppers? Primarily youngsters and middle-aged adults ages 18 to 49, college educated urban and suburbanites, and non-white cellphone owners, Pew found. Just 4 percent of mobile phone owners ages 65 and up, however, used their device to look up online product reviews.

Add this study to the mountain of evidence that shows that consumers want a hybrid offline and online shopping experience.

“I believe that you’re going to see more change in how consumers shop and pay … in the next three years, than we’ve seen in the last 20 years,” eBay president and CEO John Donahoe recently said of the trend. Donahoe’s company makes applications for in-store mobile comparison shopping, and eBay had an especially strong fourth quarter thanks in no small part to mobile-toting holiday shoppers.

Image via Coal Miki/Flickr

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Even with the advent of online marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist, it’s far too easy to accumulate junk that you’d be better off selling. Now there’s an easier way to sell your aging and neglected collection of vintage records.

ShopSavvy, maker of the popular mobile bar code scanning apps, is today announcing SavvyListings, a service that will let you offer anything for sale simply by scanning a bar code. Afterwards, you only need enter the price (ShopSavvy offers recommendations for prices of similar products in your area) and product condition to make it available to the company’s 20 million users. There’s no need to add a lengthy description or product photos.

Adding the ability to sell items right from within the ShopSavvy app was one of the company’s most request features, co-founder and CEO Alexander Muse told VentureBeat in an interview. Coming hot off a recent funding round of $7 million and a major app update, Muse said that the company wanted to deliver a valuable new feature to tide over users as it worked on tablet and web versions of ShopSavvy.

The new service shows that ShopSavvy still has plenty of room to grow and experiment — not bad for something that started out as a fairly simple Android app. Now ShopSavvy is one of the most widely used shopping comparison apps around.

The first iteration of SavvyListings functions like a mobile-focused version of Craigslist, as Muse describes it. The service focuses on local interactions, since it’s far easier to sell things to people who live nearby, and it also offers an obfuscated way for buyers and sellers to communicate. Best of all, ShopSavvy is offering the service completely for free, and it won’t be taking any fees from transactions.

Muse says the company is also working on adding product buyback capabilities to SavvyListings eventually, so if nobody wants to buy your iPhone at your set price, you’ll be able to sell it back to the manufacturer or a gadget reseller right from within the app for less. The company has formed an agreement with the same firm that powers the popular reseller Gazelle, which means the buyback feature will likely function smoothly once implemented.

Eventually, Muse says that SavvyListings will be able to complete the entire transaction from within the app.

ShopSavvy has offices in San Francisco, Calif. and Dallas, Texas, and has thus far raised a total of $11.5 million. It’s most recent funding round was notably led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Shopkick, the app that lets you earn rewards and deals simply by walking into a retail store, is kicking butt.

The company has pulled in over 3 million active users since launching over a year ago, it said today. And over a billion of its in-app deals and offers have been viewed.

Shopkick’s app communicates with a patent-pending device in stores, letting customers earn rewards simply by strolling into a store and looking at products. All you need to do is have the app open to earn rewards — there’s no hunting and pecking for locations (and praying that GPS functionality works) that you get with an app like Foursquare.

The app’s success shows that Shopkick is certainly on to something. Consumers love earning rewards and free stuff, and retailers get a simple way to target specific customers.

During the holidays, Shopkick users interacted with stores over 3.1 million times a day, up from just 1 million in August. The company says it has seen over 5 million retail store walk-ins as of December 2011.

Shopkick’s technology has now been deployed in over 4,000 stores and 250 malls cross America. Recent partner brands include Old Navy, Disney, and Levi’s.

Other notable stats: The company has seen over 150 million interactions with retailers since it added Old Navy in November. Sixty four percent of Shopkick users are women (more than half of whom have kids), and the average user is 30 years old.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Shopkick has raised a total of $20 million from Kleiner, Greylock Partners, Reid Hoffman (investing as an individual before he became a partner at Greylock), Citi Growth Ventures & Innovation Group, and Ron Conway’s SV Angel.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Any good spring cleaner enjoys weeding out a load of clothes, shoes and bags that still have life in them, but are just taking up closet space. Poshmark launched today with $3.5 million in funding to let anyone sell their old items.

Founder Manish Chandra, who also founded Kaboodle, explained that when he entered his closet, he saw bags of unopened items, barely used handbags and nice shoes collecting dust, and he realized closets all over the country probably look the same. For Chandra, however, eBay seemed too involved a process to list all of the items he wanted to sell. He created Poshmark, which allows anyone to list their items easily by taking a picture of the item,m uploading it directly into the app, choosing a list price and adding a title. Boom, you’re selling your clothes online.

“I look at this very similarly to what happened with Webex,” said Navin Chaddha, managing director at Mayfield Fund, in an interview with VentureBeat. “People used to travel to hold meetings, then webex came, people didn’t need to travel.”

What Chaddha is suggesting is that because mobile is so prevalent in our lives, we won’t need to use the computer, let alone hold in-person Tupperware or trunk shows to sell our things. Instead, we’ll just need a smartphone.

The Poshmark team built a new e-commerce environment from scratch, including its payments system. Once you’ve listed an item and an interested buyer purchases it, Poshmark will hold the payment itself. It then sends a shipping label to the item seller, who must print and ship the item accordingly. How to ship, what company to use, and other decisions are already made for the seller, which certainly takes some of the edge off getting your item to the buyer. One the item is received, Poshmark releases the payment to the seller and the transaction is completed. Poshmark uses Braintree to handle credit card payments.

The application is aimed at women, with words like “fashionistas” being throw around. All hail the dude who wants to join the app’s real draw: the “Posh Party.” Similar to companies such as Stella and Dot, which sell jewelry through individual entrepreneurs who put on home trunk shows, Poshmark has theme events such as Holiday Sparkle or Capes & Coats.

Items unsold during these parties become a sort of living collection, which people can shop until all the items have been snapped up. Otherwise, items are found through following other users who either list clothes and accessories they’d like to sell, or repost other people’s items for sale if they find them interesting. You can have discussions around an item as well, using the comments field. Like Twitter and Facebook, you can call out another user in the comments by using the “@” and then that person’s username.

“The power of that mobile phone and thinking how ubiquitous it is, it makes it possible for people to be disengaged and then engaged [with Postmark].” Chandra told us of how people are using the application.

According to Chandra, one woman made three sales while sitting in a bar in Atlanta. Another woman bought two items while taking a cab ride in New York City. This kind of behavior makes it possible for businesses to form.

“I think it’s very likely that women will start businesses,” said Chandra. “We want any woman to convert her closet into a live boutique.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

ShopSavvy, a barcode scanning startup with applications for the iPhone and Android devices, is making the mobile shopping experience more social and ramping up hiring, thanks to $7 million in fresh funding.

Led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, this is ShopSavvy’s first formal round of funding, despite having first launched its Android application more than three years ago.

ShopSavvy has somewhat accidentally blossomed into a viable business. “I don’t think we realized what we had,” said ShopSavvy co-founder Alexander Muse said in an interview with VentureBeat of the company’s early days. Today, however, ShopSavvy has more than 10 million users who use the application to scan product barcodes, comparison shop and build wish lists.

With a large user base and new funding to support growth, ShopSavvy’s next priority is to build better ways for users to engage with the products they scan, as well as foster a more social experience that taps the shopper’s Facebook and Twitter social graphs for product recommendations, said Muse.

“We think shopping is changing,” Muse said of the intersection between mobile and social shopping. “We’re going to be able to show you how to engage with this new world that’s coming about.”

The average ShopSavvy user now scans nine products per month. But the company plans to maneuver down the grocery aisle and push users to scan grocery items. Muse predicts that the average monthly scan volume will jump to between 21 and 30 scans when that happens.

Bumping up the scan-per-user count is essential to ShopSavvy’s bottom line. “We have a business model driven by scans,” Muse said. “We know what store you’re in and what you’re going to buy, and we can deliver an ad based on that.”

Because of this localized and contextualized data, ShopSavvy’s average CPM is north of $400, Muse said.

With the new financing round, ShopSavvy is also expanding its board of directors to include Eduardo Saverin, James Bailey and ShopSavvy COO John Boyd.

The funding will be used for product development as well as for hiring engineers and salespeople, according to a company announcement posted Tuesday.

Consumers can download the AisleBuyer mobile application for iPhone or Android, create an account by adding their credit card information and begin scanning items at select retailers. AisleBuyer notes that it is currently working on being available at more than 19,000 locations.

After scanning an item’s barcode, the app displays the product’s information and also adds it to a mobile shopping cart. While shopping, the AisleBuyer app pushes deals and promotions offered by the store to the shopper, who can activate them if he or she is interested. When done shopping, the customer simply picks which credit card to use and applies it to the total in the shopping cart. A digital receipt is then available for confirmation.

For retailers, the company provides a web-based tool for accessing analytics on what shoppers are doing in-store, like scanning items and purchases. If a store decides to run a promotion, it can then track foot traffic and conversions that might be a result of the effort.

Mobile payments is a rapidly growing arena with major players like PayPal, Visa, Square as well as others all looking for a share of the market. Most notably, Google recently stepped into mobile payments with Google Wallet, an Android app that will house important information, like your credit card numbers. AisleBuyer may be at a major disadvantage against well known competitors, but on the other hand, there is currently no clear leader in the mobile payments space.

The Boston-based company, founded in 2009, secured the round of funding from Old Willow Partners, who also participated in the company’s initial funding in 2010.

With the increasing popularity of smartphones and tablets, consumers will likely find themselves using those platforms more to make purchases in the future — that’s where MobiCart comes in. The UK startup is unveiling technology at the DEMO conference today to let anyone create and manage their own Web store for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. Best of all? It’s free.

MobiCart stores work as standalone applications even if you don’t have a website. If you do have a site already, you can use MobiCart’s application programming interface, or API, to update your MobiCart store from your existing site. The API allows third-party developers to extend MobiCart’s platform, and the company says it will have a marketplace available for users to find such extensions.

It’s competing most directly with the e-commerce platform Magento, but that company’s mobile offering only works with Magento-powered stores. MobiCart is more flexible since it can be used by people who don’t have websites. Magento Mobile also costs users $799, plus a $699 annual maintenance charge. MobiCart is determined to keep its app free for users, and is currently working on open-source revenue models to make money. It didn’t get into specifics, but open-source companies typically charge for maintenance and support contracts and also offer consulting and integration services, allowing them to profit from software that’s given away.

MobiCart doesn’t have any investors yet, and is currently funded by an $80,000 private loan.

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