Thanx, the leading loyalty and digital guest engagement platform for restaurants, announced the launch of Thanx Stored Value enabling consumers to preload funds to pay for future purchases through a new partnership with Ansa. This solution is the first to allow consumers to pay in-store with Apple Pay or Google Pay using merchant-specific stored value funds, thus completely eliminating the need for new hardware. Ansa is a digital wallet platform founded by leading payments industry experts previously from Adyen and Affirm, offering ‘wallet-as-a-service’ technology.
The first Thanx customer to offer this capability is Urbane Cafe, a 32-unit West Coast chain specializing in chef-crafted sandwiches and salads. Says Caprice Kindgren, Urbane Cafe Director of Marketing, “We know that our top guests would love to be rewarded for adding funds to their Urbane Cafe app and we’re excited to lock in their loyalty. Thanx Stored Value and Ansa help us deliver for our guests without having to add any hardware in-restaurants.”
Consumers can also use Thanx Stored Value funds to pay for app- or web-based digital purchases. Whereas typical stored value solutions require dedicated hardware investments to manage in-store payments, the Thanx+Ansa solution eliminates cumbersome barriers for brands and consumers, enabling seamless integration with any POS provider capable of accepting Apple Pay. Additional benefits of Thanx Stored Value include increased customer retention and revenue as consumers who prepay are more likely to return for subsequent purchases and upfront cash flow as stored value balances are immediately available to restaurants when loaded. Starbucks, for instance, has been reported to maintain a prepaid balance of approximately two billion dollars.
Consumers can easily load and manage funds through an intuitive in-app experience and merchants will have the option to incentivize preloads with bonus offers at the time of loading or accelerated loyalty point accruals when paying with preloaded funds.
“At Thanx, all of our digital experiences are thoughtfully designed and purpose-built to drive customer lifetime value. Thanx Stored Value is yet another tool for our customers to increase guest engagement and grow incremental revenue. In many ways, what we’re offering is superior to anything else on the market today; better economics than gift cards, no new hardware to manage, truly point of sale agnostic, and best of all, no need for consumers to even open an app to pay in-store,” says Zach Goldstein, CEO and Founder of Thanx.
“Thanx is the leader in helping restaurants achieve growth and profitability, and at Ansa, that’s our mission as well,” says Sophia Goldberg, CEO and co-founder of Ansa. “We couldn’t be more excited for every business to make their most frequent customers their most profitable with branded, easy-to-deploy digital wallet technology.”
