Locally developed app teams up with credit union to cast wider net for bargain hunters

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This article was published 19/12/2018 (1007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After about five years of growing its user base one consumer at a time, Winnipeg fintech app company, Pricerazzi, is looking to boost its user base into the millions by partnering with financial institutions.

Launched about five years ago by Winnipeg entrepreneur, Declan McDonald, Pricerazzi developed a data base of lowest price guarantees from hundreds of North American retailers and algorithms that can put its users in touch with retailers' price guarantee savings.

More than 50,000 individual consumers have downloaded the Pricerazzi app but this month it announced its first institutional partnership, with St. Catherines-based Meridian Credit Union who will offer the service free of charge to its members on its own on-line banking app.

Pricerazzi's individual users pay Pricerazzi 15 per cent of the savings its service is able to secure for its users. McDonald said Pricerazzi is able to uncover an average of 20 per cent discounts on submitted receipts with an average deal size of $54. The service is able to find savings on one out of five receipts submitted.

Dave Baldarelli, the senior vice-president and digital banking and analytics at Meridian Credit Union, said the ability to offer the Pricerazzi service to its 325,000 members was very much aligned with Meridian mission statement to make it simpler for Canadians to have a better life.

"We learned that more than 75 of the largest retailers in Canada offer price matching programs but only about five–to–10 per cent of consumers take advantage of that."

"We learned that more than 75 of the largest retailers in Canada offer price matching programs but only about five-to-10 per cent of consumers take advantage of that," he Baldarelli said. "When we did some analysis of the market we had some conversations with Declan and we're excited to be able to enable this for our members."

Baldarelli said Meridian is proud to be the first financial institution to offer such a value-adder service to its members but understands that Pricerazzi is working on others.

McDonald said, "The credit unions, may be smaller but they are every innovative. We are lucky to have Meridian as our first customer. But we expect there will be lots more coming up."

He said the company is in multiple conversations with other banks and credit unions in Canada and the U.S. regarding similar partnerships and expects to be able to announce others soon.

"There is whole bunch to follow," McDonald said. "2018 was about validation for us. 2019 will be about scale. Soon we will be able to reach millions of users pretty quickly."

In addition to those kinds of mass market partnerships, last month Pricerazzi announced its ability to expand its service to include online shopping.

That means it will also have exposure to the $136 billion Canadian on-line shopping market that 75 per cent of Canadians are currently engaged in. Pricerazzi understands better than anyone what every retailer's policy is when it comes to lowest price guarantees and that there are billions of dollars that consumers leave on the table.

When it comes to on-line retailers, Pricerazzi can access savings in an automated manner when users sign up for email authorization through Pricerazzi with their Gmail or Outlook account or forward their online receipts to receipts@pricerazzi.com.

Pricerazzi uses its automated algorithm to search for the lowest price. If the purchased items are being sold for less than what the user paid or have gone on sale, the service immediately sends a money back alert via email.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca