Readers of Chicago's StreetWise magazine can now pay their vendor with their smartphone via PayPal.
Recently, StreetWise vendors have been losing valuable business to the phrase, “Sorry… I don’t have any cash on me.”
In order to address this problem and tap into the trends of the digital age, StreetWise have been working with advertising agency Bartle Bogle Heggarty (BBH) and PayPal on a model that could be scaled up in Chicago and beyond.
Both BBH and PayPal Labs donated time and resources to make the project possible and to create a custom offering that ensures mobile payments are seamless, secure and free to the vendors to use.
“Homelessness is an issue that’s important to BBH" said Saneel Radia head of innovation for BBH NY & BBH Labs. "We like to think of ourselves as a creative and innovative organisation. So the idea that we can apply those skills to help address an issue we care about was an opportunity we jumped on. Given that StreetWise is a leading street paper, we hope to see how mobile payments work in Chicago before they’re potentially rolled out to papers around the rest of the country.”
Customer reviews have been excellent so far and while the mobile payment initiative is still very young, StreetWise hopes to engage the modern day consumer with this exciting new program in order to keep StreetWise on the map of modern technology. Read more.
