The high street turns towards digital as Barclays becomes Flux’s first incumbent partner.
The digital receipts platform has scored a game-changing deal with Barclays to bring its software to over 10,000 mobile users of the bank’s testing app, Barclays Launchpad, in a trial run.
Should the trial period be successful, Flux can expect to roll out its services to the 5m customers currently using Barclays’ mobile-banking app.
A graduate of the incumbent bank’s start-up accelerator programme in 2017, Flux raised more than $1.5m seed round lead by PROfounders in September this year.
The fast-growing platform delivers real-time receipts, including item data and VAT, directly to the user’s mobile banking app by linking up its software through bank cards to the retailer’s point-of-sale (PoS) system.
The partnership will also include a pilot on Flux’s software being tested with Barclaycard, which will provide merchants with the ability to issue digital receipts to all customers making payments through its PoS.
Flux previously announced a partnership with Starling Bank as the challenger bank’s first fully integrated partner within the Starling Marketplace. Starling users now receive real-time receipts to their app when they make a purchase at any of Flux’s partnered retailers, which is currently being trialled with the food outlet EAT.
The platform is also in closed user trials with Monzo, and is working on integrating retailer loyalty stamps into its software service. Should the Barclaycard partnership prove successful, Flux has stated that it may look to add more retailers to the platform next year.
Matty Cusden-Ross, CEO and co-founder of Flux, said: “We believe that Flux is the next biggest innovation for retail payments since contactless. Nobody wants to keep track of hundreds of bits of paper in the 21st century. We are determined to digitise the world’s receipts by linking to how customers pay anyways so we don’t change behaviour at checkout.”
Michael Harte, Group Head of Innovation at Barclays said “Through the Group Innovation Office and Rise, our open innovation community, we continue to partner with FinTechs to experiment and test new ideas. We are delighted to be trialling Flux technology as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the experience we offer our customers.”
