Even though Foursquare is only starting to monetize, Crowley said the company has been working on its ad products (by which he means the company's merchant platform) for 3.5 years — it just wasn't really charging until now.
Zerve, a startup backed by the likes of DFJ and Yahoo founder Jerry Yang that has built a merchant platform for local businesses to list activities, and then take sign-ups and payments for them — think OpenTable for events — is today kicking off a new phase in its life.
Merchant platform and specials.
There are so many startups begging for attention, with consumer-facing mobile wallets, mobile payments startups, mobile coupons, daily deals, local offers, loyalty platforms, card-linked merchant platforms, and more, all jostling for position.
Editor's note: Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, a leading consumer, merchant, and developer platform for Bitcoin purchasing, selling, and payment acceptance.
That led Shopify to cross the 500,000 mark for merchants on its platform for the first time during the quarter, a user population that's spread across 175 countries worldwide.
REUTERS Groupon Moves Into Restaurant Reservations With Savored Deal | As Groupon continues its quest to become a big platform for merchants, it appears that the online coupon purveyor is moving into restaurant reservations — and a little into OpenTable's domain.
The bigger goal is in turning Groupon into more than just a sender of daily deal e-mails: it's to transform the company into a broad platform for merchants, allowing them to provide discounts, book restaurant reservations and travel packages and track customer spending.
A few years later, Schwan joined Cardfree, a software platform for merchants.
Or Teespring, another Keen IO customer, could embed the Data Explorer on its platform for merchants.
PayPal is also expected to debut a new payments platform for merchants as well as in-store integrations.
