SKUxchange

SKUxchange (SKUx), a fintech company headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, was founded in 2018 to address inefficiencies and fraud within the promotional offer ecosystem. The founding team, including Bobby Tinsley, Jim Sampey, Robert Zaccardo, Kenneth Douglas, and Moshe Joshua, brought together a diverse set of experiences to tackle longstanding issues in consumer incentives. Tinsley, the CEO, has a background as an entrepreneur, investor, and even a former recording artist, with expertise in marketing and technology. Sampey, the Chairman, began his career at NCR and spent 22 years at Cox Enterprises, focusing on consumer data, analytics, and strategic planning. Zaccardo is an entrepreneur with over 30 years in the sports, retail, and entertainment industries, while Douglas specializes in technology and FinTech company growth.

The company provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that transforms traditional coupons and rebates into secure, serialized, one-time-use digital payments. This core technology, SKUPay®, is designed to manage item-level payments, allowing brands and retailers to deliver highly targeted offers directly to consumers. The platform serves a range of clients, including consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, retailers, marketing agencies, and organizations in sectors like healthcare and disaster relief. By turning promotional offers into single-use digital currency, SKUx aims to eliminate the costly and slow clearinghouse process, reduce fraud, and provide near real-time settlement and data analytics. For instance, instead of a paper coupon, a consumer can receive a digital payment on their mobile device, valid only for specific products, which streamlines the checkout process and provides brands with immediate redemption data.

SKUx's patented technology facilitates this by creating individualized identification numbers for each digital offer, tracking them from issuance to redemption. A key feature of the SKUPay® system is its ability to validate a transaction's eligibility at the point-of-sale without needing to send sensitive customer basket data to external systems. The platform integrates with existing point-of-sale (POS) systems and supports various use cases, from CPG promotions and loyalty programs to customer care reimbursements and employee rewards. To enhance security and transparency, SKUx leverages Hedera's distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create an immutable audit trail for transactions, mitigating fraud through a zero-knowledge proof process. The company has established significant partnerships with major players like Visa, Mondelēz International, and Blackhawk Network to expand its reach and capabilities. Since its inception, SKUx has raised over $40 million in funding through several rounds, including a significant Series A, to fuel its growth, expand product offerings, and hire key talent.

Keywords: item-level payments, digital promotions, fintech, retail technology, consumer engagement, mobile payments, CPG marketing, secure payments, distributed ledger technology, SKUPay, fraud prevention, PaaS, digital rebates, loyalty solutions, point-of-sale integration, Hedera, real-time settlement, first-party data, customer rewards, brand-funded promotions, digital incentives, mobile wallet, payment innovation, retail analytics, offer serialization