Ahead of the weekend, Sionic Mobile announced the addition of complimentary iBeacons to its ION Loyalty small business merchants.
The ION Loyalty merchant app has been enhanced to “monitor the iBeacon with little or no impact on the mobile device battery.”
We’re told that in the coming weeks, the company’s consumer app, ION Rewards, along with partner apps reaching nearly 100 million mobile customers, will be updated to take advantage of the iBeacons.
Beacons represent the next phase of mobile payments and mobile loyalty platforms. Currently 85 of the top 100 retailers have adopted or have plans to adopt beacon technology, and experts anticipate beacons to impact an estimated $44 billion in US retail sales in 2016.
Sionic Mobile says that it selected iBeacon technology from Apple, continuing its support of in-store, one-tap checkouts using Apple Watch and enabling small businesses and local merchants to leverage the same mobile technology as larger, big box retail chains, but with no upfront costs or investments.
“Small businesses are the cornerstone of our economy, and we are committed to delivering sophisticated mobile solutions that meet the unique needs of these local merchants,” said Ronald Herman, CEO and founder of Sionic Mobile. “ION Loyalty is simple to use, and eliminates the traditional barriers like rising costs, hardware and software requirements, or simply lack of time and resources that up until now, have prevented many small business owners from taking advantage of the mobile opportunity. In less than 10 minutes, a small business owner can be up and running on ION Loyalty, and with the new iBeacons, the customer experience is far superior to other mobile apps available today.”
