Wisely: Promoting Relationships One Purchase At A Time

In an era when consumers and businesses are generating unprecedented amounts of information, one company – Wisely – is aiming to leverage that data to help consumers and merchants make more informed spending decisions.

Co-founder and CEO Mike Vichich spoke with PYMNTS.com in a podcast interview in late 2013 about the Wisely’s bid to become “the Google of payments.” But does it mean to be a search engine geared specifically to spending decisions?

In a more recent follow-up podcast, Vichich recently sat down with Market Platform Dynamics CEO Karen Webster and discussed Wisely’s upcoming attendance at the Innovation Project 2014. During the interview, (Jump To: 0:45) he broke down what Wisely aims to accomplish for consumers and merchants.

“I think the best way to sum it up in one sentence is: Wisely is making commerce smarter by helping consumers discover and build relationships it their favorite merchants,” he said.

Vichich went on to say that Wisely represents a step beyond the services offered by Google or Yelp in terms of finding data on a restaurant or merchant. (Jump To: 3:30) Users contribute to Wisely by way of their own spending, helping new consumers tap into restaurants that receive positive reviews, generate customer revisits or offer deals based on certain spending patterns.

“It’s similar to Netflix, for example,” Vichich explained. “If you link up your account to Wisely, we can tell you places you might like based on your purchasing behavior. We can also tell you places that you might be a critic for.”

Vichich added that Wisely allows merchants to promote consumer relationships with loyalty efforts(Jump To: 4:15).

“Imagine that you walk into a store,” he said. “They know you are valuable to their business [through your Wisely usage], so they can give you a personalized service. … It’s all about finding great places and building relationships with your most favorite merchants.”

You can learn more about Wisely at The Innovation Project 2014, March 19-20. Get on the list.

To hear more from Vichich about what Wisely hopes to accomplish by leveraging purchase data to help inform future spending decisions on the part of consumers, listen to the full podcast below.