Validate Coupons and Vouchers Barcodes Anywhere

As a merchant or marketing platform provider, you want a seamless experience when the coupon or voucher is redeemed. There must be a simple, repeatable method for validation; an alert for fakes or duplicates; and a corresponding report for tracking purposes.

Since just about everyone has a personal Android or iOS device in their pocket, they are a good choice for use as a validation tool. Alternatively, the merchant or service provider may already use those types of devices at the point of sale or service location.

Using barcodes for coupons and vouchers is a good format choice. You can easily distribute in print or mobile formats. Also, scanning them is quick and easy when using the iOS or Android OS device’s built-in camera.

Unfortunately, people can copy barcodes. So how do you protect merchants and service providers from fraud? You use one of the three techniques that a lot of large ticketing companies deploy.

First, With a Validate Scans service type you would validate a barcode ID one-to-one against an associated database. It’s ideal if there is a database of valid coupon or voucher IDs, and that database is available to upload to our servers (or to validate directly on your servers or a third-party server). Also, you can validate the scanned barcode ID against the associated database ID to catch fakes and duplicates.

However, that validation database is not always readily available from your service provider or easy to integrate without a developer. If that’s the case, the next best option is pattern validation.

With our Pattern Validation tool, the scanned barcode ID is validated first against a database –  if a partial database is available – and then against a pattern for those values not in the database. The partial database is not a requirement, but if available, it’s a good idea to use it.

The more complex the pattern, the more difficult it is for the fraudster to create a fake coupon or voucher barcode that will scan as valid. This method also stops duplicates, regardless of the pattern’s complexity.

If there is no associated database and no complex pattern to validate against, you can still stop duplicates. You would use our pattern validation tool. Importantly, you should make the pattern simple. For example, you could specify the number of digits or characters in the ID. You don’t even need a pattern at all. However, even a simple one could be helpful.

You can filter, view, and export each marketing program’s scan records in real-time from the Scans page of CodeREADr.com. For automation, you can create Tasks filtered and exported based on a schedule. Exported scans can even be auto-inserted to many databases and directly or indirectly to Business Intelligence platforms.

Marketing Platform providers can use several tools for direct integration, including Postback URL, Direct Scan to URL (DSU) and through our API.

Many clients shared with us that in the past, validating and tracking coupons and vouchers had been time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately, CodeREADr validation tools allow you to easily catch fakes and duplicates, and see the results in real-time. And for as little as $14.99/month/location.