Piggly Wiggly Shoppers Earn Cash Rewards at Checkout

Piggly Wiggly Midwest has teamed up with Ibotta Inc., to allow its shoppers to earn cash rewards when using their Preferred Club Card to buy select products that are promoted on the Ibotta mobile app.

“Our shoppers asked us to enable Ibotta in our stores, and we listened,” said Gary Suokko, COO of Piggy Wiggly Midwest. “Ibotta provides rewards in addition to the savings and discounts that are already available through the Piggly Wiggly Preferred Club Card.”

Once a shopper registers their Piggly Wiggly Preferred Club Card on the Ibotta app, earnings for Ibotta Offers are redeemed upon checkout, with the cash rewards being deposited directly to their Ibotta account. Shoppers can withdraw their money using PayPal or choose other rewards.

“Tying Ibotta directly to Piggly Wiggly’s point of sale system makes it easier than ever to redeem Ibotta offers and earn cash,” says Ibotta’s CEO, Bryan Leach. “We’re excited to be partnering with Piggly Wiggly on this initiative.”

Ibotta can be downloaded for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Starting June 20, 2013, Ibotta can be used in-store at Wisconsin and Illinois Piggly Wiggly locations.

According to Bill Bell, director, information technology for Piggly Wiggly Midwest, one key reason for working with Ibotta was the ease of the technical implementation, which he referred to as a very straightforward process.

The process is even more straightforward for grocers that use the IT Retail POS system. IT Retail recently developed a direct interface with Ibotta so that the information is transferred electronically to the vendor with no need of a loyalty card – the user is ID’ed by their phone number, which the Ibotta App collects during registration, as is happening at Rio Ranch supermarkets.

“Through IT retail’s technology integration, Rio Ranch shoppers will be able to use their phone number as their customer ID, the first such solution anywhere in the country, meaning no loyalty card will be required,” Leach told Progressive Grocer. “[IT Retail’s] work also ensures that Rio Ranch will have a real-time data transfer, so shoppers will be able to download Ibotta, interact with the media content we've sourced directly from brands like Coca-Cola, Kraft, and Kellogg's, checkout with their phone number, and then minutes later they will receive a push notification saying they've earned cash. Our brand engagements are what really set Ibotta apart; they include 12 types of interactions, ranging from video to recipe to poll to Facebook and Twitter posts, to testimonials, nutritional information, charitible information, and so forth.”