Edo, a card-linked local offers platform which targets customers based on their real-world spending behavior, has closed a $15 million Series C round of funding, the company announced today. The round was led by VantagePoint Capital Partners, and saw participation from Baird Venture Partners and other existing investors, bringing edo’s total financing to $54.3 million.
Unlike many of the current local offer platforms, edo doesn’t require a check-in, a punch card, a mobile app, or specialized point-of-sale hardware. Instead, it ties to consumers’ bank cards (credit or debit), and then tracks spending behavior to know which offers to send.
These offers can come through a mobile app, SMS or email. But edo is a white label platform, so it’s up to the consumer’s bank as to the specifics surrounding the implementation. The benefit of having the offers platform tied to the card is that, when redeemed, offers can be immediately credited to a consumer’s account. For example, if you’re out shopping and you get a text for a discount or deal at a sandwich shop and you decide to go there for lunch, you don’t have to show the store anything or take any further action beyond paying with your card at checkout. The discount is immediately applied.
The company reports having over 140+ bank and financial institution partners, including Fifth Third and Ally Bank, and over 200 local and national merchants on board, including Nordstrom, Target, Subway, Crate & Barrel and Home Depot. These are the same numbers as edo announced in May, however. The company says that over the past three months, it has pushed more than 200 million card-linked offers through its platform and it previously reported being on track to 50 million users by Q3 2012. Banks on edo were seeing card volume up by 20%, and average redemption rates of 2% to 4% in the early days of testing. But edo seems to do better in dining where redemption rates are 10% to 20%, on average.
With the new funding, edo will specifically target the local SMB market, and plans to scale through partnerships with merchant acquirers, mobile payment providers, and media publishers. The company competes with Cartera Commerce, which reaches some 65 million U.S. consumers and 150 million worldwide. Cartera, incidentally, closed a $12.2 million Series D in June, also with the intention of moving into the local offers space. Groupon, watch out?
