Swipely, the only startup from Rhode Island that I can name, has doubled the total ‘flow’ of payments through its system in the past quarter. That’s to say that the company is now processing payments at a rate of $500 million per year, and 90 days ago it was at half that level, or a pace of $250 million per annum.
The company has raised a total of $8.5 million, the lion’s share coming in the form of a $7.5 million Series A round of funding in early 2010.
Today, in addition to the new processing rate milestone, the company announced two upcoming features for its payment platform, and support for a larger crop of point of sale (POS) solutions, extending its potential reach.
However, what is Swipely? The company is an intelligence layer on top of processed payments. In short, merchants use Swipely to track revenue, customer retention, and the like. It’s not designed for the smallest business, however, with a suggested minimum sales rate of $30,000 per month for companies that sign on.
Aside from graphing, charting, sorting, and dating purchases made by credit cards, Swipely provides another service: simple customer retention systems, or what are often called rewards programs. As TNW’s Harrison Weber reported in 2012:
[The company] hopes to set a gold standard for rewarding customers and bringing them back. Swipely’s product isn’t what you might expect though, as it works atop transactions. This means that as long as customers have their credit card, they’ll always have their loyalty card
It’s proving popular. PandoDaily likened the metrics and user experience that Swipely provides to offline businesses to web analytics. It’s an apt comparison. Anyone who has used Google Analytics, Clicky, or even ChartBeat, will grok what Swipely serves its users. Ironically, I suspect that those familiar with online analytics are not Swipely’s core user demographic.
Moving forward, Swipely is looking to expand the ability for businesses to track how their efforts drive customers to their venue, store, or restaurant. A new feature dubbed ‘Campaign Insights’ the feature helps businesses track certain customer segments following a promotion, say, and then compare that user group to others through time, allowing them to measure the financial efficacy of offline advertising or other methods used to drive engagement.
Swipely is also working to release a simple, one-hub tool to help companies track their Yelp – etc – ratings, aggregating in review data from around the Web. This may save companies time. Also, the tool can be used to track rival firms as well.
Finally, the company has expanded the POS network that it support to more than 50 systems. This will likely help the company continue to drive growth.
Top Image Credit: Steve Snodgrass
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