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The recent move by Amazon to offer $5 for retail shoppers to buy online felt like kicking a man twice when he was already down to a lot of retailers.  Many merchants were already concerned about being used as a glorified showroom for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos before this recent move with speculation that many were missing their numbers because of Amazons mobile price check application.

Here at ShopSavvy we love local merchants.   Our users want to know what all their options are both online and local presented in a neutral and unbiased way— not just merchants in Amazon’s marketplace.  They want this presented without favoritism so they can make good buying decisions about product selection and where to buy.  Buying from Amazon is great and for many habitual, but did you know in our system they are the lowest priced choice only 7% of the time? If you buy from Amazon, you are not always getting the best deal and they certainly don’t work to get you local options.

Even when the price is lower online, our users often want to see what their local options are, either for immediate gratification or because they love the relationship they have with their local retailer.  In the long run we believe a balanced ecosystem of strong local retail with efficient online options is healthiest and this is what we strive for.

So while local stores have had a really brutal few years, this is going to change in the next few years as they get new opportunities to fight back.  In fact, we think current shopping experience for local retail is going to be transformed significantly in the next 3-5 years.   The mini computers people are carrying in their hands now are just using things like reviews, purchasing and price comparison as an early beachhead.  In a few years the way you shop locally will be completely different.

Why? Whole new conversations will be starting between brands, retailers and shoppers will transform retail and the shopping experience making it more connected (with friends/family), informed and enjoyable.  This will dramatically improve the local shopping experience and give local merchants new ways to offer value relative to online options that may not be readily apparent now.

Consumers are open to new sorts of conversations with retailers that are not happening now.  For example, currently most conversations between retailers and consumers now are what I call “One to Many”.  If you offer a sale, it’s often to large groups of people and there is very little segmentation or targeting.   With these new technologies based on loyalty data, buying patterns, and strategies such as competitive couponing, consumers will start to have one to one conversations with retailers.

The last decade or so has not been a great one for local retailers, but  the tide is changing with advances in technology.  Ironically, the technology that is causing pain for local retailers now, will offer new opportunities in the future.  For the those retailers that embrace this change, and get ahead of the curve, we believe it’s a competitive opportunity to recapture some lost ground and create a better shopping experience for shoppers.  This takes courage not to stick your head in the sand while Amazon steals your lunch.

To that end, if you are a local retailer that is looking to find ways to start new conversations with consumers in your stores—reach out to us –we’re listening and open to new ideas to help local merchants.  Amazon doesn’t have the last word here, this is just the beginning of what technology can bring to local.

What is cool about Amazon? 1-Click purchases. What is not cool about Amazon? Their prices are often higher than other retailers (in ShopSavvy they are only the best price 6% of the time). What if you could scan a product with ShopSavvy and find the best prices from online and local retailers (Amazon included) and buy the product with 1-Tap inside of the app? That is what we call quick pay and it is now live for iOS users in Florida.

With the second version of quick pay you can skip the website and buy from any retailer from inside of ShopSavvy. Want to give it a try? Remember this is a VERY limited version of the feature. Here are the details/limits:

- Limited Retailers: Barnes & Noble and Buy.com
- Limited Users: Florida and iOS Only
- Early Version: Super-Beta (the official release version fixes a number of issues)

The process is fairly simple. The first time you use quick pay you can add your credit card info as well as shipping information and from then on you can buy with 1-Tap. By removing all of the inertia we hope that quick pay will make saving money even easier. I have been buying books and office supplies with quick pay for the last few weeks and it works great.

If you live in Florida and what to try it out, just start scanning books and/or consumer electronics and you should see an option to buy with quick pay. Let us know what you think. Everybody else? We should have everything ready to launch nationwide on the 29th (Apple might take a few days to accept the app, but Android will be available immediately).

It seems like you can’t pick up the Wall Street Journal without reading about mobile payments here in the United States. This weekend the paper wrote about Google’s mobile payment deal with MasterCard and Citigroup. Then again this morning they wrote about American Express and their new digital payments platform aimed squarely at PayPal. Upstarts like Zong are helping consumers buy digital goods using their phone. PayPal is even trying to innovate around mobile payments despite their mobile guru, Osama Bedier, leaving the company to join Google to build yet another mobile payments system. Why so much interest in the market? Generator Research reports that mobile payments will increase from $68 billion to $633 billion by 2014.

Here in the United States (unlike Asian countries like Japan) consumers haven’t used their mobile devices to pay for goods, but everyone believes this is about to change. I can recall analyst reports from the mid-90s asking consumers if they would be willing to give their credit card numbers to retailers on the internet. Much like the movement from brick and mortar purchasing to online purchasing, we believe more and more Americans will begin to use their mobile device to pay for goods and services. This belief is driving our development efforts at ShopSavvy.

Since launching our partnership with PayPal and Cardinal Commerce in 2009 we have learned a lot about mobile payments. Unfortunately we have mostly learned what NOT to do. Here are some of the lessons we have learned:

• do not require consumers to use a single payment form
• do not require merchants to use a particular processor
• do not require merchants to use a particular integrator
• do not depend on the merchant to do anything

Consumers have their favorite payment methods. The key is to allow them to use ANY payment form inside of your system, while removing as much payment inertia as possible. Amazon has done an excellent job doing this. Their ‘wallet’ allows a consumer to pay with any payment form, while making buying as simple as ‘one click’. Of course in mobile there are rarely any ‘clicks’, instead you have ‘touches’ and ‘swipes’.The holy grail of mobile payments is to create a system that will work with ALL merchants.

This is where ShopSavvy comes into play. Consumers are already using ShopSavvy moments before actually buying the product they are scanning. ShopSavvy reveals comparison pricing information about other retailers helping the consumer make an informed purchase decision. If the consumer could use their payment data already stored inside of ShopSavvy to complete the purchase – i.e. a one tap payment – we believe our solution would be as powerful as Amazon’s solution with one important distinction: neutrality.

Our data shows that Amazon’s prices are the lowest only 6% of the time. That means that in 94% of scans our users are seeing better deals from other retailers. With a single scan consumers can be sure to find the best deal and with a single tap they can complete a purchase. QuickPay 2 makes mobile payments for products a reality.

Investors have been asking me how ShopSavvy will compete with all those other wallets from Google, PayPal, Zong and AMEX. The answer is relatively simple: we will support any payment form that is popular. ShopSavvy isn’t building a wallet, per se, instead we are building a shopping platform with payment integration.

Earlier today Scott Baradell issued the press release formally announcing that Matt has joined the team (he has actually been on board for a few weeks). Matt will be working in our San Francisco ‘office’ (not really an office yet, but shortly) with John Boyd our VP of Business Development. Matt is VP of Product with a special focus on our QuickPay 2.0 (augmented payment + NFC) initiatives. Here is the full release:

ShopSavvy, the personal shopping companion for smartphone users, today announced that it has brought on Matthew Weathers, former product lead for PayPal Mobile, as vice president of product. Among his responsibilities, Weathers will lead the development of ShopSavvy’s mobile commerce strategy, including QuickPay, which enables ShopSavvy users to purchase the products they scan without ever leaving the application.

“IE Market Research projects that purchases made via smartphones in the United States will exceed $40 billion by 2014, and ShopSavvy intends to be a driving force in this fast-growing market,” said Alexander Muse, co-founder of ShopSavvy. “Matt Weathers, who ran the product team and strategy for PayPal Mobile, is an ideal choice to lead this effort.”

In January, ShopSavvy introduced QuickPay 1.0 on both the iPhone and Android smartphones. The feature enables consumers who find great deals to easily buy an item on the phone and have it shipped home. QuickPay 1.0 uses PayPal, but in the near future, the company will unveil QuickPay 2.0, which will also support credit cards. QuickPay 2.0 will also become a wallet to enable point-of-sale purchases via near field communication (NFC).

“QuickPay will allow ShopSavvy users to use the app as an integrated wallet, making purchases from both local and online retailers without needing cash or a credit card in hand.” Weathers said. “I am excited about the opportunity to develop this element of ShopSavvy as we work to extend our lead as the No. 1 app for shoppers.”

In QuickPay 1.0, when ShopSavvy users scan a product barcode, the application performs a product look-up and returns pricing information from local and online retailers. Participating retailers will automatically display a QuickPay button that users can click to access PayPal and complete the purchase.

Upon its release, QuickPay 2.0 will expand these payment capabilities to serve as a fully featured, integrated wallet. Not only can ShopSavvy consumers store credit cards and bank accounts in their wallet, but they can save money overall by also storing coupons, gift cards, instant rebates, loyalty cards, and cash back rewards in their QuickPay wallet. With a simple and secure PIN entry, users can quickly buy items to be sent home or purchased at a point of sale.

Weathers, who will be based in ShopSavvy’s Bay Area office, was part of the founding team for PayPal Mobile. He led the mobile product team for four years and built out the product suite for three business lines: P2P payments, eBay mobile checkout, and mobile merchant services. Prior to that, Weathers worked in PayPal’s merchant business on ecommerce checkout flows and some of the first large merchant integrations. Most recently, he led the product strategy for the turnaround of eBay France, which relied heavily on local commerce. He has an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from UCLA.

We began working with PayPal last year to launch in-app payments inside of ShopSavvy. Mobile payments are going to be HUGE and in our case we believe that augmented mobile payments will be the game changer in the mobile space. Last night 4.1 went live and I wanted to be the first QuickPay user, but by the time I got my order in there were a few hundred dollars already processed. I could try to explain how it works, but I decided to shoot this video instead. What do you think?