NCR Silver Adds LevelUp as a Payment And Marketing Option

NCR Corp. has added mobile payment and marketing provider LevelUp as an option for merchants using NCR Silver, NCR’s tablet-based point-of-sale system, NCR announced this week.

Duluth, Ga.-based NCR says consumers can pay with LevelUp once merchants activate it as a payment option in NCR Silver. NCR Silver is a tablet-based POS system that operates on Apple Inc. iPads, iPhones, and iPod touch devices. The move aims to broaden NCR Silver’s appeal to merchants at a time when mobile payments are expected to grow, says Reggie Kimble, NCR Small Business director of business development. Forrester Research Inc. forecasts mobile payments volume will increase to $141.7 billion in 2019, nearly triple the $51.5 billion in volume this year.

“As mobile-payment adoption increases, so will merchant and end-customer demand,” Kimble tells Digital Transactions News in an email. “We want to arm merchants with all the tools possible to keep customers happy. Whether it’s Bitcoin, Apple Pay, or LevelUp, small-business merchants deserve the same technology that larger ones have.” This fall, NCR added Bitcoin and Apple Pay acceptance to Silver.

To use LevelUp, a unit of Boston-based SCVNGR Inc., consumers download an app to their smart phones. They fund the LevelUp account with a credit or debit card. To make a payment, the merchant scans a bar code generated by the app. The consumer can earn points toward a merchant’s loyalty program, while the merchant gains valuable consumer purchasing data.

NCR Silver pricing starts at $59 per month, not including hardware. LevelUp charges 1.95% per transaction and a 25% fee for marketing campaigns, based on redemptions made by consumers. LevelUp supplies the scanner to use with its service, Kimble says.

“LevelUp looks to partner with leading POS companies like NCR Silver to help provide merchants and customers with a range of payment options, as well as with seamless, cutting-edge mobile-payments functionality,” Bryan Thompson, LevelUp director of strategic partnerships, tells Digital Transactions News in an email. “This integration will make LevelUp available to the thousands of merchants currently using NCR Silver.”

NCR will not quantify its mobile POS installed base, saying only that “thousands” of merchants use NCR Silver and that “tens of thousands of devices” use NCR Silver apps.

Thompson says the average ticket on the LevelUp platform is about $10. “Many of our merchant partners see 20% to 30% of their transactions running through the LevelUp platform in the first couple of months,” he notes. “Consumers can track their loyalty progress right in the LevelUp app, or in a merchant\’s branded app. Over time, consumers’ average spend and visitation rate increases, about 3% to 5% for spend and 5% to 10% for visitation, leading to an increase in same-store sales.”

The combination of NCR Silver and LevelUp is a good fit, says Beth Robertson, principal at consultancy Robertson Payments Services LLC, especially since NCR Silver was developed using the concepts of point-of-purchase/mobile-device payment acceptance and integration of related functionality, such as loyalty applications. “Comprehensive, turnkey solutions like NCR Silver help small firms focus on their core business while enabling a spectrum of functionality that would take time, resources, and expertise to pull together independently.”

LevelUp and NCR have worked together since 2013 when NCR integrated the mobile-payments scheme into its Aloha POS system.