Flattr has partnered with Socialvest, an Atlanta, Georgia based service that has deals with 600 U.S. based online retailers to take a percentage of sales and use it for charitable donations. With the Flattr partnership, now whenever a user shops at a participating retailer, they get 1-50% of whatever they spent kicked back into their Flatter account, which they can use to Flattr charities and content creators. Unfortunately Socialvest only focuses on U.S. online retailers, however they’re looking into adding Amazon Germany and UK support. Flattr has a large German presence.
Socialvest offeres an interesting service to drive socially conscious shoppers to online retailers. They use a browser plugin to alert users which online retailers will donate a percentage of their purchases to charity. Socalvest does not keep track of surfing habits or credit card details, and keeps itself funded through deals with retailers.
The service has a large US presence and a list of over 600 shops from giants like Amazon, Adidas, RadioShack, Threadless, iTunes Store, and Banana Republic. Some companies offer huge kickbacks to your Flattr account. At the top, Chemistry.com gives back 50% of whatever you spend, Match.com offers 37.5%, and Magazineline.com offers 17.5%. Users can expect to see 3-5% back from most retailers.
The partnership was initiated by Socalvest as they were looking for a mechanism that would allow their users to have greater control of distributing the money users receive. The partnership does not involve any revenue sharing at this stage. The benefit for Flattr is that its users get more funds in their accounts which they can use to support content creators and charities. Flatter takes a 10% cut of the non-charity Flattrs moving through the system.
Siim Teller from Flattr tells ArcticStartup, “It really is a win-win-win situations where our customers do what they do anyway – shop – and because thanks to that they have more to spend on Flattr we increase revenue and can invest more into developing our product.”
