Last Updated on: 22nd November 2023, 06:24 am
The Coupon Bureau (TCB), a non-profit, industry managed coupon data exchange technology platform that works with many of the largest consumer product goods (CPG) manufacturers and others in the retail ecosystem, announced today that it is using the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) from Hedera Hashgraph to provide a real-time, tamper-proof log for all coupon events on its platform. This will allow coupon providers, manufacturers, clearinghouses, and retailers the ability to validate in real-time when coupons are registered and redeemed on the platform, without having to trust any single party.
“The Coupon Bureau is doing important work to provide the industry with connectivity to a shared database that will house all distributed, serialized coupons available for redemption,” said Brandi Johnson, CEO of The Coupon Bureau. “TCB’s platform will enable real time validated, retailer agnostic manufacturer coupons to support smarter and more strategic campaigns, mitigate fraud, and simplify the redemption and reconciliation processes. TCB’s offering will support all stakeholders in the coupon ecosystem while maintaining their current business models and enabling growth. We are thrilled to integrate the capabilities of the Hedera platform.”
The Coupon Bureau, whose advisory committee includes members from Target, General Mills, and GS1, works with leading CPG manufacturers coupon issuing brands, as well as with accelerators that provide access to point-of-sale systems at leading retailers that represent almost 70% of the US retail market. The Coupon Bureau aims to have a connected retail store within 5 miles of any consumer inside the Continental United States within 12 months of deployment of its system.
Hedera Hashgraph is the enterprise-grade distributed public ledger. It enables anyone, anywhere, to build and run fast, fair, and secure applications on the distributed internet. The Hedera network is governed by the Hedera Governing Council, which will comprise up to 39 blue-chip, multinational entities from a diverse array of industries. The Governing Council was designed to ensure decentralized, responsible governance for a next-generation distributed ledger.
“After evaluating a number of distributed ledger options, only Hedera Hashgraph, and the Hedera Consensus Services (HCS) were able to provide the real-time, tamper-proof logging capabilities that we needed to bring transparency, trust, agnosticism and industry oversight to a platform that connects all coupon industry stakeholders,” continued Johnson. “HCS is really the only offering in the market today that is capable of providing the transaction throughput and latency, security, and functional requirements needed. We are pleased to be able to bring the benefits of the Hedera network to all of our stakeholders.”
“Through this partnership, Hedera has learned that fraud and lack of real-time, standardized data around coupon usage are two huge challenges facing the retail industry that TCB aims to address,” said Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph. “Approximately 250 billion coupons are issued in the US annually, many through different providers, allowing consumers to redeem multiple versions of the same offer and costing brands millions of dollars. By adding the Hedera Consensus Service to the TCB platform, we together will create a trusted, immutable log for coupon transactions for all authorized stakeholders.”
“Today, in addition to combating multi-million dollar fraud, brands issuing coupons have limited line of sight into where their coupons are being redeemed and when,” continued Harmon. “Bringing visibility and transparency to the coupon supply and usage chain is a perfect use case for Hedera and HCS”.
