The CardLinx Association Adds Firms, Expands Show Events in Mobile Payments

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot out of the CardLinx Association, an association of businesses geared toward improving interoperability and stepping up growth in the “card-linked offers industry.” That’s a move that could do great things for improving the card-based mobile payments concept, especially as so many cards are out there pursuing market share. Just in the last week, CardLinx announced two new members and announced its upcoming event for the Asian market.

One new addition to CardLinx’s lineup was Dosh, a company which focuses on online-to-offline engagement. Using card-linked offers to help drive in-store sales, Dosh offers merchants customer data that helps to shape the overall customer experience. Dosh also provides a means for merchants to take some advertising dollars and pipe them directly to the customer, helping to ensure repeat business better than any ad campaign might.

Meanwhile, the second new addition was Kard Financial which also offers up a prepackaged loyalty reward program. Kard has already been spotted working with some major names in the field, including Walmart, The Gap, and Home Depot, and offers shoppers a chance to earn reward points by shopping therein. There’s even a Kard extension for Google Chrome that makes the program easier to work with.

CardLinx even filled us in on its upcoming Asia Forum, in which several speakers would be on hand to discuss topics related to the payment card industry, as well as offer opportunities for users to network.

It’s fairly clear that CardLinx is looking to make a name for itself. It’s brought together a lot of separate businesses to work toward greater interoperability and opportunity in the field. If businesses do connect to CardLinx, it improves the odds of their own payment card systems working well and getting the attention of the end users. With so many card-based and mobile device-based options out there, it would be easy for users to get overwhelmed and stick to a few basics as being “what they can handle.”

Getting overwhelmed is a problem these days. By consolidating options, a business can improve the odds of being a favored option and staying out of the background din. CardLinx looks to do that fairly well, and improve the stance of mobile payments in the process.