Andrew Jason, reporting for the Wall Street Journal:
The latest entrant into the merchant-deals game is Bank of America Corp., which is testing a service with employees in North Carolina, South Carolina and Nevada that delivers merchant offers directly to users within their online bank accounts.
The big differences: The deals are pegged to card activity and, instead of printing a coupon or downloading a bar code on a mobile phone that a retailer must scan, the customer opts into a deal by clicking on it within their list of purchase transactions. They redeem offers by swiping their debit or credit card at the merchant offering the deal.
“Really interesting,” said Thomas Hubbard, a professor of management and strategy. “Groupon is a modern Green Stamps, which credit card rewards killed.”
