People’s Champion finalist 2017: Yoyo Wallet

Start-up name: Yoyo Wallet
Founders: Michael Rolph and Alain Falys
Started in: January 2014
Based in: London
Business description: Mobile-first payment, loyalty and personalised marketing platform

Shortlisted category:

App of the Year 

The Yoyo Wallet story:

In the running for a Startups Awards accolade for a second year is Yoyo Wallet; Europe’s fastest growing mobile payment and customer engagement company on a mission to make bricks-and-mortar shopping more rewarding for retailers and customers.

Yoyo provides retailers with the opportunity to identify every customer at the point of sale, turning anonymous shoppers into individuals with purchasing preferences and habits.

Retailers can then use this insight to engage each individual – personalising the customer experience by sending offers and rewards that are most relevant for them. Simultaneously, customers benefit from a secure and fast mobile payment experience, automated loyalty collection and digital receipts, through a single scan using their mobile handset at the point of payment.

This year, Yoyo – which employs a team of 55 – processed more than one million monthly payments for its 400,000 users. On the client side, the service now operates in over 1,700 outlets and in more than 60 UK and Irish universities.

It has also won over brands such as Visa, JP Morgan and Vodafone, which have adopted the service in their office canteens.

More recently, Yoyo’s unique technology has been sought after by high street retailers and in April 2017 it launched a mobile payment and loyalty app for Caffè Nero across the UK and Ireland.

The app is operational in 643 stores and over 150,00 customers have downloaded the app so far. The benefits to a business like Caffè Nero speak for themselves: for a campaign for ice drinks, spend on baskets increased by 212% while average transaction value increased by 26%.

Its founders Michael Rolph, a Growing Business Young Gun, and Alain Falys are focused on expanding the business further over the coming year. Expansion which will no doubt be supported by Yoyo’s bulging $30m war chest; which includes a $10m Series A round and a £12m Series B round in June of this year.

Why Yoyo Wallet made our shortlist:

Yoyo Wallet’s innovative and unique app is driving numbers behind mobile loyalty programmes.

With research indicating that consumers now spend over three hours a day on their mobile phones, and are 40% likely to buy more when targeted through personalised shopping, Yoyo is leveraging mobile loyalty and generating impressive results.

Where to find out more about Yoyo Wallet:

Website: https://www.yoyowallet.com/
Twitter: @yoyowallet