How Fetch Rewards benefits shoppers and retailers

Come January, the company plans to announce a partnership with a "decent-sized chain" that will put the total number of stores it services at over 100, up from 56 currently, CEO Wes Schroll said. Fetch Rewards also recently brought on former dunnhumby CIO Paul Hunter as a consultant, and plans to launch a second, "retail agnostic" app in the first quarter of 2017 that will be available for use nationwide. One aspect of Shop Fetch that's gotten a lot of attention recently is its "expedited checkout" feature. While app users still interact with a cashier at the end of each trip, the process takes less time because the cashier simply needs to scan a bar code on the customer's phone before processing payment as they normally would. "We didn't want to force someone to use mobile payment when as of right now there's still a lot of people vying for who's going to be the leader in that market. So we really wanted to make it so the shopper could still use food stamps, for example, if they need to, and still be able to use the application and gain the benefits from it," said Schroll.