iBonus smart card system not only bring to Kosmo Living International Ltd. (Kosmo) a large customer base with loyalty. Being the off-the-shelf solution has enabled Kosmo to justify their investment. The high scalability has enabled Kosmo to minimize the risk of investment at the beginning.

Kosmo is a group specialized in providing food and beverages with good nutrition value. They foresee people nowadays are more concerned with their health and would like to spend money to make themselves feel better and look better. With successful marketing strategies Kosmo has now more than 12 branches around Hong Kong, China and Europe and deployed iBonus Terminals at each branches.

iBonus Smart Card System was used as prepaid solution. To be a member, customer can simply charge HK$100 (approx. 10 Euro or 12 USD) to their new member card. The value stored in the card can be used for future purchase. Being a member, 10% discount was offered for food and beverages for a limited period of time. As prepaid is required during the registration, the cost of the card is easily covered by the member’s first time purchase with card balance.

At the beginning, being unsure about the market acceptance of the member concept, 3 iBonus Terminals was first deployed in the flagship store at D’Aguilar Street, Central, Hong Kong and several thousand cards was printed. A Pentium 4 grade Server Computer was used to serve as iBonus Server. Transactions were transferred from Terminals to Server through broad band network.

Customers of Kosmo easily saw the benefit of being a member, which can lower the cost of buying food and beverages. Kosmo soon need to print more card to fill the strong demand. Their membership concept has soon been proven to be welcome by customers.

Being highly scalable, iBonus System allows them further deploy Terminals at other branches quickly. As iBonus Server has a very low computational requirement, they do not need to upgrade the server considering the expansion of their fleet of iBonus Terminal and increased number of members. Today Terminals are fully deployed at more than 12 branches over Hong Kong and Mainland China.

In conclusion, iBonus System brings both members and merchants in win-win situation. Merchants can begin with little investment by deploying the system in one to two branches. Once tested their positive feed back. More Terminals can be added without upgrading the server.