Twitter launches digital coupons

Twitter Offers is an intelligent take on offering deals and discounts on goods and services that does away with coupon clipping or print-outs.

Twitter Offers is an intelligent take on offering deals and discounts on goods and services that does away with coupon clipping or print-outs.

Instead, if a special offer tweet appears in your timeline and you like the look of it, you can accept the deal without leaving Twitter and the money-off promotion is automatically saved to a linked credit or debit card.

When it comes to redeeming the offer, simply pay with the linked card and the reduction or multi-buy offer happens automatically. No need to present a coupon, use a loyalty card or fiddle with a QR code on a smartphone display.

Although the new feature could prove to be a real hit with consumers, Twitter Offers is in reality aimed squarely at businesses and Twitter sees it as a way for advertisers to 'attribute redemptions directly to their campaigns on Twitter, so that they can effectively measure the ROI from their promotions, even when redemption happens offline.'

The new service is about to go live for a limited trial in the US over the holiday season and Twitter has signed up what it describes as a handful of brands to help get the project started.

As for security, when a user adds a Twitter Offer to a debit or credit card, the information is encrypted and there is an option to remove information at any time.