Micros Retail Systems, a provider of enterprise applications serving the hospitality industry in the New York metro area, has partnered with Mocapay to mobile-enable its customers’ loyalty and gift programs.

Merchants continually express interest in leveraging innovative ways to expand their loyalty and gift programs to attract and retain customers, and Micros decided to add mobile to the mix to ultimately help merchants increase their revenue and brand loyalty.

“We’re very excited about being able to offer this mobile product to our customers and their clientele, because it will expedite ordering, increase gift cards and it will be green,” said Lubodar Olesnycky, president of Micros Retail Systems Inc., Weehawken, NJ. “Our customers will no longer have to buy single-use gift card that will be thrown out.

“I have a bunch of gift cards that I’ve received over time, and I don’t carry all of them, so I can’t take advantage of them if they’re sitting in my drawer,” he said. “Now people will have their electronic wallet on their phone and they’ll be able to take advantage of those gift cards while they’re on the go.

“It’s a very simple process that I think will catch on fire.”

Micros Retail Systems Inc. serves table-service and quick-service restaurants with complete information management platforms that include software, hardware, enterprise systems integration, consulting and support.

The point-of-sale distributor has more than 2,200 installations in the metro New York/New Jersey area.

Micros clients include Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, Cracker Barrel, T.G.I.Friday’s, Ruby Tuesday, Subway, the Hard Rock Café, Panera Bread, Dean & Deluca, Friendly’s and Houlihan’s.

Mocapay addresses merchants’ need for a new channel that will broaden their loyalty and gift programs by mobilizing sales and marketing to reach customers anytime, not just at the point of sale, encourage purchases and build a stronger brand affinity.

Restaurants going mobile
Mr. Olesnycky said Mocapay provides a platform that lets Micros customers enhance and leverage their existing point-of-sale equipment while also tapping into a new channel – the mobile channel – that reaches customers before, during and after a transaction to increase repeat customers and brand loyalty.

Mocapay is the only mobile software-as-a-service vendor merchants using Micros can leverage to integrate mobile marketing into the payment stream to create a new and cost-effective channel to enhance the lifetime value of a customer without the expense of new hardware requirements or security concerns.

Mocapay has fully integrated its mobile SaaS platform with the Micros iCare Solution ,as well as a number of point-of-sale systems Micros Retail Systems customers use, including Micros Series POS E7, 3700 and 9700.

Using Mocapay’s mobile SaaS technology, Micros Retail Systems’ customers will have access to a secure mobile platform that can distribute customized promotional text messages and mobile offers to targeted customers in a certain geography or store location.

Consumers who create mobile accounts will be able to conduct mobile transactions at the point-of-sale, access their account balance and transaction history and find the nearest merchant location accepting the mobile loyalty and gift programs, as well as reload their account, all from their mobile phone.

Mobile account holders will also be able to conduct mobile gifting, which enables real-time gift-giving directly to another mobile phone.

The mobile gifting feature also helps merchants to increase their revenue and grow their customer base.

“A lot of merchants are asking What do I do in mobile, what do I do about the mobile space?’ so we’re offering a new service or capability to Micros customers to provide mobile marketing, gift and loyalty programs,” said Kevin Grieve, CEO of Mocapay, Denver. “They service about 4,000 merchants in the greater New York metro area, including 2,200 original contact relationships.

“Micros has always been on the forefront of technology to add value to their merchant base, and this gives Micros a plus-one feature and an additional value-add for their customer base,” he said. “If a customer wants to do this, it’s a very complex landscape to build a mobile solution, and it’s costly.

“Because of our Software-as-a-Service model, we have a mobile program we can deliver out of the box that they can seamlessly plug into their existing POS investment, and it’s not disruptive to the business, because they don’t need specialized handsets or hardware at the POS.”