A Startup Pitches Revenue from Receipt Ads to Merchants

DreamPlayVentures, a Cedar Knolls, N.J.-based startup, is talking to transaction processors and retailers about a product that would let merchants generate revenue by selling advertising space on credit and debit card receipts. The firm this week reported that its parent, DreamPlay LLC, has filed a patent application describing its underlying technology. The patent involves DreamPlay's initial product, dubbed Pay per Print. DreamPlay president Andrew Bittman is guarded with the details, but says his system will enable merchants to print on card receipts messages from virtually any advertiser without changing point-of-sale hardware. Ads currently generated at the point of sale, for instance, might consist of a coupon on the back of a grocery-store receipt from the competitor to a company whose item the customer just bought, Bittman notes. Or a retailer might print an entirely separate coupon. “Our products will be separate from that,” he says, refusing to divulge specifics. Like other startup systems such as Combined Payments Network LLC's Fastlane Secure Payments, DreamPlay hopes to tap into merchants' frustrations with card-acceptance costs. In a release, DreamPlay says it believes its system “will dramatically increase the number of retail merchants offering credit and debit card solutions as payment options.” It also says “DreamPlay Ventures was created to completely disrupt the existing revenue model in the merchant-provider space. Utilizing our solutions, merchants may be able to reduce the fees they pay and earn revenue just by having someone pay by a credit or debit card.” But DreamPlay isn't saying just yet how its revenue model would work. Bittman and his partners are making the rounds among merchant processors and retailers to pitch their system. “We've already spoken to a majority of the top seven [processors], and had meetings with most of them,” he says. Depending on the individual contract, independent sales organizations may be involved in selling the messages, he says. How revenues will be split among the parties will depend on each contract, he says. DreamPlay is privately funded by Bittman, an advertising-industry veteran, and his partners. Bittman says he expects he'll be able to reveal more about the firm's plans next month.