To cash in on their free slices, users need to link any credit or debit card to their LevelUp accounts. When they get to the restaurant, the app generates a unique QR code at the register that can be scanned with a merchant app to pay. Up to $10 of pizza is on the house, and anything more than that will be charged to their connected accounts.
LevelUp, which was created by check-in game SCVNGR, makes mobile payments more practical by taking NFC hardware out of the equation. It can be used with an iPhone app, Android app or through a mobile website. Google Wallet, by contrast, can only be used by those who have a Citi Mastercard or Google prepaid card and an NFC-enabled phone.
A trickier problem than practicality, however, is getting people interested in using their phones to pay in the first place.
"I don't think the payment experience is particularly broken," SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch told Mashable. "You need to add something more."
That's where the $10 of free pizza comes in. Merchants can add rewards to LevelUp that are already waiting for customers the first time that they use the app. Customers earn free credit at that merchant every time they spend money there using the app. It functions like a loyalty card.
But is that enough to get people scanning their phones instead of their credit cards? T-Mobile is betting on it. They've partnered with the startup to provide merchants with scanning hardware that replaces the merchant app and makes it easier to accept LevelUp payments. Since launching in October, the startup has accumulated 100,000 users and teamed up with more than 1,000 merchants in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.