Index

Index, a San Francisco-based retail software company, was founded in 2012 by Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan Wall. The founders, who were formerly the product and engineering leads for Google Wallet, established Index to bring the measurement and personalization of e-commerce to the physical retail world. Their background in developing Google Wallet provided them with a unique perspective on the opportunities available to enhance the in-store customer experience for major retailers. In March 2018, the company was acquired by Stripe, a prominent online payment processing company, to integrate Index's point-of-sale software capabilities and expand Stripe's services into brick-and-mortar stores.

Index developed a sophisticated software platform targeting top-tier retailers, particularly in sectors like quick-service, grocery, and apparel. The company's business model centered on providing a semi-integrated payments solution and a fully hosted gateway. This system was designed to offer retailers enhanced security through point-to-point encryption (P2PE), flexibility in payment processing, and EMV chip card reading in under a second. Revenue was generated by providing these tools to large retail businesses.

The core service offered by Index was its unique point-of-sale (POS) integration that allowed retailers to create a unified profile for each shopper. This enabled the collection of customer contact data and linked the in-store transaction to marketing efforts. By doing so, retailers could personalize the customer experience, measure the return on investment of their marketing campaigns, and ultimately build customer loyalty. The platform effectively allowed brick-and-mortar stores to recognize, remember, and reward their customers, bridging the gap between offline and online retail channels.

Keywords: retail software, in-store payments, customer data, point-of-sale integration, personalized marketing, payment processing, semi-integrated payments, hosted gateway, POS software, customer relationship management, brick-and-mortar retail, Marc Freed-Finnegan, Jonathan Wall, Stripe acquisition, Google Wallet, EMV, P2PE, customer loyalty, retail analytics, offline commerce