Orange Launches Quick Tap Treats

Orange UK has launched Quick Tap Treats, the UK’s first mobile contactless retail reward scheme, in partnership with the EAT restaurant chain.

Quick Tap Treats will enable all Orange customers with NFC-enabled handsets to tap their mobile phone on NFC-enabled posters at any of the 110 participating EAT outlets – airports and concessions are not involved in the promotion – to receive a free treat each day. Treats on offer include coffee, sandwiches, fruit, and various food and drink upgrades. Orange is also launching a Quick Tap Treats App. The promotion runs until “summer” but there’s no start date given. We’re chasing it down.

Orange says approximately 200,000 customers will be able to access the new Quick Tap rewards programme from launch. All Orange customers with Quick Tap (NFC) handsets will receive a text informing them about the Quick Tap Treats rewards programme, and a marketing campaign supporting the initiative will break in early March.  If any customer is unsure whether they have an eligible Quick Tap handset, they can contact Orange customer services, who will be able to advise them.

David Murphy writes:
Another day, another not insignificant step in the evolution of mobile marketing. We’ve all been talking for some time now about the day when consumers would routinely tap on NFC-enabled posters or terminals to get offers sent to their phone. So far, there’s been little evidence of it actually happening. So Quick Tap Treats is a welcome initiative from Orange and EAT. Perhaps not surprisingly, Orange has been pretty quiet about Quick Tap since the initial noise around its launch last year. We asked for a review sample of one of the phones to check it out within hours of the announcement. We’re still waiting…

But this type of promotion, to my mind, is exactly what a new technology needs. It’s simple, making it an easy message to put across. And best of all, if you take part, you get free stuff, but you can only take part if you’ve got the right sort of phone, encouraging consumers to at least think about NFC as a feature they might want on their next phone when the time comes to upgrade. As an Orange customer myself, and one with an NFC-enabled phone, I cant wait to check it out.