Patent ID: 8489450

Claim:
A method to acquire customers for merchants using a mobile application or a browser interface of a prospective buyer, comprising: capturing attributes from the prospective buyer; creating a prospect profile for a user based on data including purchase history, social networking data, location data from location-sharing services, and search history; performing predictive analysis to extrapolate the prospect profile to include geo-location and timing associated with the geo-location; creating an intent prediction for the prospect profile from historical purchase or payment data, coupon redemption data, geo-location of the user, interest categories, time-stamp, contextual information including check-ins in the last one-hour, and data from social networking platforms; precisely targeting the prospective buyer by using the prospect profile and intent prediction; generating an offer by a processor with an action selected from the group consisting of: a mobile application request, a geo-fence, a near field communication (NFC) check-in, a location-sharing service check-in, and a user pull request; locating candidate merchants and filtering candidate merchants using the intent prediction for the prospective buyer; initiating opportunity auctioning within the candidate merchants for an opportunity to send an offer to the prospect; applying rules to specify a time range, a prospect discount offer percentage, and customer acquisition fee percentage; validating the rules by validation engine; identifying a winning merchant with a winning bid having a predetermined combination of an Acquisition Fee Offer for a Platform Service Provider and a Prospect Discount Offer; generating a coupon with the Prospect Discount Offer using the processor for the user on behalf of the winning merchant; dispensing an advertisement or coupon to the mobile application or the browser interface; providing monetary benefit to the buyer with the coupon; acquiring new customers for the winning merchant with the Acquisition Fee Offer; and sharing revenue with the winning merchant.