SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Parkers Cos. has launched a debit card, tied to customers' bank accounts, that offers a discount at the gasoline dispenser, reported The Savannah Morning News. The card offering a discount of up to 10 cents a gallon has been "unbelievably" popular since it began two weeks ago at 24 area stores, president and CEO Greg Parker told the newspaper.
Customers must have a checking account, email address and driver's license to participate. They pick up a card at a Parker's convenience store, go online to sign up and after confirming a small credit and debit placed in their checking accounts, they can use the card at the pump to get the discount.
After two weeks, 3,000 cards had been activated and an unspecified number is in the pipeline, the report said.
Savannah, Ga.-based Parker's has advertised the PumpPal Club program extensively, touting prices on its store signs and advertising on TV, billboards and buses (watch the video below or click here).
Convenience retailer Flash Foods Inc., Waycross, Ga., has been offering a debit card through the same company as Parker's--National Payment Card Association in Coconut Creek, Fla., for two-and-a-half years, NPCA executive vice president Danilo Portal told the newspaper. The Flash Foods card offers a discount of five cents a gallon.
And area Murphy USA stations have been operating a check-card program through the same company for about nine months, offering a discount of three cents a gallon, Portal said. Murphy USA is a division of El Dorado, Ark.-based Murphy Oil Corp.
Many retailers are offering debit cards as a response to credit-card processing fees that retailers say are eating way too much of their profits, said the report.
Portal said gas stations that are paying five or six cents a gallon to credit-card or debit companies instead pay about 1 cent per gallon for his company's service. NPCA serves 26 convenience store chains, mostly on the East Coast, with more than 4,000 locations.
Parker said he would rather the customers get the money than the credit-card companies. He said he hopes to make more money because he will sell more gasoline and other items, partly because of loyalty specials he will offer to repeat customers. "Even if I don't make more money, I don't want to give the money to MasterCard and Visa," he told the paper. "I want to give it to my customers."
In addition to saving money on each transaction, stores using the debit-card service also control valuable customer data, which is useful for in-house promotions and can be sold to outside companies, Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, told the Morning News.
Parkers Cos. is a network of more than 20 Parker's Convenience Stores and Parker's Market Urban Gourmet stores in six counties throughout Georgia and South Carolina. The company also includes an oil jobbership, which distributes branded fuels to dealers throughout the Southeast. Other company businesses include Spin City laundromats and Urban Attic self-storage facilities. |
