A bitter end for Bling Nation

In the startup environment, it is a habit to talk about successes to keep our hopes alive for the future, but it is a big mistake to forget the failures of the past and not benefit from the experiences of the past. For this purpose, the Ecomotive team has collected the experiences of a series of failed startups, so that reviewing their failed stories may be a basis for the success of new startups in Iran’s startup community. This collection will be published and made available to the audience in the form of the story of failure. We review the thirtieth part of this series, which deals with the failure of the Bling Nation startup.

Bling Nation helps businesses turn their best customers into loyal fans and their friends into new customers through social rewards. This service was actually a mobile platform that facilitated doing things for its customers by having a strong social network and cost-effective mobile transactions.

Bling Nation was based in Palo Alto, and since 2009, has offered its NFC stickers in areas not covered by major SIM card companies. Customers could make wireless payments at local stores through their bank by attaching these tags to their mobile phones. At its peak, this service was used by nearly 20 banks and about 1000 stores nationwide.

But the world of technology was changing every day. After a few years, the period of small payments passed. With the arrival of services such as Google Wallet And Google Offers and also Squier And Square card case, the situation became much more complicated than in 2007 and the sweet days of Bling Nation. In the meantime, PayPal experienced a strong entry into this field with a large number of business partners and retailers. That said, it became clear to BlingNation that its platform and technology would work best if it focused on loyalty, rewards and targeted local offers.
The problem started here; That is, when Bling Nation asked the banks and stores in its payment network to join the loyalty program. Fanconnect to join—which allowed customers to receive coupons in exchange for posting Facebook updates about their Bling Nation purchases—many balked. In such a way that by stopping the issuing of stickers from the bank La Junta In March, the company made joining FanConnect optional.

After the introduction of PayPal’s unique retail payment platform, Bling Nation’s original business plan seemed redundant. The new world was a hotbed of Google Wallet and PayPal Wallet, and Bling Nation no longer had a place in it.