Technology firm Bango has enabled Portugal’s retail chain Continente to sell subscriptions to the streaming service Disney Plus via its Digital Vending Machine, the companies announced on Wednesday.
Starting this week, Continente shoppers with the Cartão Continente loyalty card will be able to add Disney Plus for just €2 per month (around U.S. $2.10 per month), which unlocks the ad-supported tier of the entertainment service.
When customers buy Disney Plus with Ads through the Cartão Continente loyalty card, they enjoy certain cash back benefits, the companies affirmed. The same is true when customers convert their subscription to the standard and premium versions of Disney Plus.
“Offering Disney Plus alongside our existing rewards strengthens our commitment to delivering the best benefits to our customers,” Filipa Appleton, the Head of Brand and Marketing at Continente, said in a statement. “This initiative is an example of Continente’s continuous effort to offer added value to the daily lives of all families. Furthermore, it is a differentiating proposition in food retail, which clearly reveals the strength of our ecosystem with different brands and which allows us to guarantee relevant services for all.”
“Creating an ecosystem of exceptional subscription offers is key to building lasting loyalty. With subscription services now an essential part of everyday life, the ability to seamlessly deliver these promotions to customers is a huge opportunity,” said Anil Malhotra, the Chief Marketing Officer at Bango. “The Digital Vending Machine empowers partners like Continente to continuously add to and enhance their promotions and adapt to changing customer needs with ease.”
The partnership between Bango and Continente is one of the first to involve a retailer with physical stores across Portugal. Historically, Bango has focused its efforts on telecom partnerships, like the one it has with Verizon that enables the company to use the Digital Vending Machine to sell access to streaming services and unique bundles.
But Bango has never positioned itself as a company that works exclusively with telecoms, with Vice President of Marketing Giles Tongue telling The Desk earlier this year that the company wanted to “manage half a billion subscriptions, globally.”
“That could take shape in any number of ways,” Tongue said. “We’re agnostic about the partnerships on both ends — to us, it’s one company’s product or service being sold by another company. We bring those partnerships to the real world, and make those transactions happen. We can go broad, or we can go niche. We can break down barriers.”
The Cartão Continente partnership involving Disney Plus serves as an example of Bango going broader to help the world connect to and manage different subscription experiences. It took just three months for Bango and Continente to go from concept to launch, Tongue said in an email this week.
“We’re incredibly proud at Bango of getting this live so quickly, given that commercial bundling deals can often take 6 months or more to complete,” Tongue wrote. “To have agreed commercials and completed all the operational work is fantastic, and its thanks to the standardised approach we’ve developed to bundling and working with partners, using our Digital Vending Machine, which comes with all the technical capability required to quickly launch subscription bundling business.”
More than two million Cartão Continente loyalty members will be able to take advantage of the Disney Plus perk, which comes at a time when holiday shopping is starting to reach its peak and interest in streaming services that offer holiday-themed content is at a high.
“This partnership shows how Bango makes it simple for brands, including retailers to offer fantastic subscription products and enables content providers to connect with new customers, at both speed and scale,” Tongue said.
