Electronic Coupons

[beachdogvet]

I'm in interested in electronic coupons delivered or facilitated via an Android Phone application. I've done some preliminary searching on Google but haven't really found anything as of yet. I'm particularly / specifically interested in the "architecture" of it all such as....

Overall flow of how the process works. For example,

1. A person (patron) receives an electronic coupon for a particular place of business on their phone via some Android application.
2. The patron goes to the business establishment and presents the coupon.

Okay....that seems simple enough. Now the business is going to want to invalidate that coupon once it's used so the person can't keep coming back over and over again I would presume. How does that happen?

Does the coupon have a barcode on it for example, that's scanned by the business which then essentially marks that coupon as "used" so as to prevent the continually reuse of it over and over again?

 

[zuben el genub]

The coupons usually have the bar code for the discount. Merchant can scan the screen of your phone.
Coupon was sent via email, not messaging.

 

[RazzMaTazz]

Assuming that the business owner wouldn't want you to use a coupon more than once...

3 solutions:
1) Each coupon has a unique ID # or bar-code that business owner scans for validity/re-use.
2) Each customer has a unique account, that is tracked for a particular coupon use.
3) The patron hands their phone to the business owner so that the business owner can smash the phone.

The downside of #1 & #2 is that they must track & validate coupon use. That's pretty troublesome for small establishments like restaurants, but not difficult for large companies, like all of the big, computerized chain stores-- especially the ones that have customer-rewards programs.