Womply

Of late Groupon has received plenty of criticism from both customers and merchants; businesses indiscriminately give discounts, and users receive coupons of little interest to them. Essentially, Groupon’s business model appears to lack the value inherent in more granular targeting. Womply, a new start-up, which just recently launched in DC, has taken Groupon’s core premise, but tweaked the model so that both consumers and businesses can capture value from discount offers. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/02/womplys-new-deals-startup-loads-local-offers-onto-your-credit-cards/

The system is linked both to Facebook and to different financial institutions, it works by tapping into a user’s Facebook profile data to offer discounts independent of crowd-sourcing. The customer then reserves the offer, goes to the merchant and pays full price, but is credited the discount within 2 days by the credit/debit card issuing company. It is not yet clear how efficient Womply is at targeting customers and ensuring that they receive offers that are of interest. However, with the amount of online data available they should have no problem creating a discount system that benefits both merchants and customers.