In Chinese cities, an increasing number of companies are in the business of buying luxury cigarettes, wine, medicine, gold and silver accessories, and gift coupons at a discount.

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Apple controls the hardware and the mobile OS, and now with Passbook, it provides brand app developers the ability to link their products to a centralized and easy management of gift cards, coupons and tickets.

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Offer gift cards or custom coupons instead of products or services.

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This opens up the possibility of this installed base of scanners to be able to process barcodes, coupons, loyalty cards and gift cards directly from mobile devices no physical packaging, cards or coupons required.

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Mobeam converts barcodes, coupons, loyalty cards and gift cards into a beam of light that can be read by every one of the estimated 165 million laser scanners in use today by retailers around the world.

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This App lets consumers manage gift and loyalty cards, daily deals, coupons, offer searches, purchases, shopping comparisons, social gifting and mobile payments.

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It stores virtual versions of your existing plastic cards on your phone, along with your coupons, and eventually, loyalty and gift cards.

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