Invigor Group signs Asian luxury goods retailer to WeChat pay platform

Business-to-business data and analytics solutions company Invigor Group (ASX: IVO) has secured a multi-brand deployment of the WeChat Pay platform through the signing of an agreement with Singapore-based luxury goods retailer Club 21.

The contract will allow Invigor to integrate its proprietary advertising and loyalty offerings solution into WeChat Pay to target Club 21 customers who will be able to redeem certain offers when shopping.

Invigor will earn a share of transaction revenue from each payment and when sales are redeemed from each offer.

Preferred platform

WeChat is a multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment application developed by China’s Tencent Holdings Limited.

The application has over one billion users, with an estimated 900 million of those also actively using WeChat Pay as their preferred payment platform when travelling overseas.

Club 21 has a large global presence with 3,800 employees stationed across stores in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The stores host over 250 high-end brands including Armani Exchange, Paul Smith, Dolce & Gabbana, Lanvin and Mulberry.

Retailer focus

Invigor specialises in helping retailers and brands collect essential data to drive profitable commerce by understanding their market, competitors and customers; driving customers and increasing sales; addressing digital payment challenges; and improving advertising effectiveness.

As a social, marketing and payments solutions, WeChat aims to achieve all these objectives in the one application.

In September, Invigor entered into a 36-month agreement with Tencent partner Winning Group Holdings to market and enhance WeChat services including WeChat Pay into South East Asian markets with a focus on Singapore and Hong Kong.

It is currently in the process of rolling out WeChat Pay to 40 of Club 21’s stores.

The retailer joins 10 other stores and tourist attractions signed to the platform earlier this year.

Growing scale

Chief executive officer Gary Cohen said the Club 21 deal reflects the growing scale of Invigor’s presence in Singapore.

“This is without doubt a major coup for [us] and demonstrates the value that respected brands and retailers see in our integrated advertising, loyalty and payments offering,” he said.

“We are now working on further deployments with Club 21 including signing on more locations as well as pursuing separate retailers to add to our books.”

Mr Cohen said the company hopes to work with Club 21 on new initiatives including shopper insights and customer relationship management solutions.

At mid-afternoon, shares in Invigor Group were up 33.33% to $0.004.