So instead of sending someone a gift card to the Gap, they can send a donation in their friend’s name to the Red Cross, World Wildlife Fund, Operation Smile or Kiva.  Other charities include SOS Children’s Villages, Plan and dance4life.

Users can decide how much they want to pay to donate to the non-profit group. In the case of Kiva, Wrapp will provide credit for Kiva so a recipient can choose who they want to provide a micro-loan to.

Aage Reerslev, Wrapp’s co-founder and EVP, told me the donations are a good fit for the Wrapp service because not everyone wants to give gifts. For some recipients, who either have everything they need or value social causes, a donation can be more meaningful. It’s also helpful for non-profit organizations who can leverage social connections and the Wrapp’s gifting mechanic to raise funds.

Wrapp, which raised $10.5 million Niklas Zennstrom’s Atomico and Reid Hoffman, doesn’t make money from donations. But the core part of Wrapp’s businesses seems to be doing well. Users have sent 4 million gifts in its first year and Wrapp now reaches 40 million Facebook users in the US through its users and their friend network. Reerslev believes Wrapp can increase the number of gifts sent by 10x this holiday season.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
• How HR can make the case for workforce analytics

LevelUp said it will not charge its 3,000 merchants interchange fees to process credit card payments and will swallow the cost. The company said instead of passing on interchange fees to move money over existing payment networks, it will look to make its money from merchants by helping them bring in new and existing customers. In essence, LevelUp feels like it can make more money by providing offers, loyalty and analytics than by facilitating pure payments.

It’s a big move that could shake up the emerging mobile payments market. Competitors such as PayPal, Square, Google and Isis are adding more value-added services themselves but they’re still looking to profit from the payment transaction itself. But Seth Priebatsch, LevelUp’s chief ninja, said transactions are a commodity that won’t hold up over time.

“The fact that we can move money, that’s not interesting. The fact that we can drive new customers and track them when they come back, that’s real value,” said  Priebatsch. “The amount of money we’re making on our campaigns is trending up and we stepped back and said if it’s stable right now we should just skip the middle part of this game and stop charging.”

For the last couple months, LevelUp has charged its merchants 35 cents on every dollar of credit provided to consumers during a campaign. So for instance, in a campaign to bring in 500 new customers, a merchant may offer $2 free credit for a first-time visitor. LevelUp will earn 70 cents for that transaction. Priebatsch said merchants typically bring in $18 for every dollar spent on a campaign. And of new customers who come in through LevelUp, 64 percent come back within 30 days and 40 percent of all new customers complete a loyalty progression with 30 days.

That’s how LevelUp believes it can be valuable enough to charge for these services. By letting merchants push offers to specific sets of customers and providing analytics that track how well the offer does and how often the user comes back, LevelUp is making enough money to support this new Interchange Zero approach. LevelUp, again, is paying the interchange fee but it’s acting like Google, which offers free search because it can make it up on advertising. For merchants, the removal of interchange fees means an average of $500 in savings a month, said Priebatsch.

But how can LevelUp afford to pay the existing interchange fee? Priebatsch said it is able to move money through interchange networks more efficiently using special algorithms and it has less fraud than competitors because of its barcode scanning and token payment system. The company is building out special relationships with banks to further decrease the cost of fees. Over time, Priebatsch said the cost of moving money over the interchange fees has also gone down, but the fees haven’t.

It will be interesting to see how competitors react. It’s still early in the race but merchants are hearing all kinds of pitches on payments, offers and loyalty programs. A service that does away with processing fees and only charges based on real business performance could stand out in the market. Merchants may feel more confident about trying LevelUp because they will only be paying to drive in customers and sales.

This fits into the larger discussion about mobile payment business, which many are realizing is much about about the services around payments than the action itself. Providing an alternative to credit cards or cash has limited appeal to consumers and merchants because the current methods of paying aren’t terribly broken. It’s really in the extra features where payment systems are able to sell themselves.

This will have an impact on not just payment providers, but also new offers and loyalty-focused startups. The reality is that these businesses are all coming together and competitors will need to be able to offer all these elements plus analytics, customer relationship management and other business services as well. LevelUp is showing that in this local scrum, the real value proposition may be in leading first with offers and loyalty and just throwing in payments for free.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Defining the mobile wallet: what it is, why it matters

Despite the growth of mobile coupons, the vast majority of them are still printed. And that’s where the biggest offers are. So instead of trying to displace coupons completely, SnipSnap a new Philadephia start-up is giving people a way to take a picture of a printed coupon with an iPhone app and display it a check-out.

The app, which launched last month, allows people to scan coupons they find in a mailer or newspaper. It reformats the information in the app and makes it easy for people to present the barcode at the point of sale for redemption. Users can get set alerts to warn them before a coupon is about to expire or remind them when they enter a store where they’ve saved a coupon. The app also offers the ability to share coupons online through Facebook, Twitter and email.

For users who don’t have coupons to scan, they can also discover other coupons snipped by  fellow users. And retailers, including SnipSnaps’s first partner, Aeropostale, can also serve up coupons inside the app’s discover tab.

Not every coupon can be redeemed successfully, either because the point of sale hardware can’t scan the barcode or because the store may not choose to accept it in this form. SnipSnap doesn’t work with manufacturer coupons right now, but the company is working to accept those offer coupons inside the app.  SnipSnap lets users report if a coupon was accepted or not, which goes into a success score rating.

Ted Mann, the founder and CEO, came up with the idea after leaving newspaper giant Gannett, where he served as digital development director. He said he was motivated by what he called his “bowl of shame” of clipped coupons that eventually expired. Eventually, the app will become a way to distribute mobile coupons, but for the present it lets people make use of the 93 percent of coupons that are printed today.

Mann’s app, which won a couple of start-up contests in Philadelphia, has seen more than 123,000 downloads and has been featured in the Apple App Store. The former DreamIt’s company announced Tuesday it has raised a $555,000 seed round.

There are still questions about how well the service can work. Retailers may rethink how generous they are with coupons if they know that can be so easily shared. And the fact that a merchant can still reject a coupon means a consumer doesn’t have that certainty that a print coupon user has. That can be a problem if retailers start pushing back on the use of the app. But if SnipSnap can work with more retailers and eventually manufacturers, it can become a viable competitor to Coupons.com and Cellfire.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Twitter Annotations and the Future of the Semantic Web
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Netflix may suffer from limited mobility

The Zynga Serve Reward program will also eventually involve turning Zynga titles into offers platforms, allowing brands to insert deals into games that can be saved to a Serve account and redeemed using Serve cards. The purchases of specific offers will unlock more virtual currency in Zynga games, potentially creating a virtuous cycle for both American Express and Zynga.

The timing of the branded offers is still yet to be determined. But for now, users can start to earn Farm Cash money in Farmville by registering for the Zynga Serve Rewards program and getting a co-branded prepaid card in the mail. Users can also earn in-game money by connecting a funding source to their card and activating it. Only the first five purchases of $25 or more on the rewards card will earn virtual currency.

Other Zynga titles including CastleVille and CityVille will also soon be integrated into the Zynga Serve Reward program. Users will be able to track their rewards through an in-game dashboard and also through their Serve mobile app.

Dan Schulman, President of Enterprise Growth for American Express, told me in an interview that this is the first rewards partnership for Serve and the deepest Zynga has allowed a partner into one of its games.  He said the partnership allows Zynga and American Express to give social gamers a richer experience and it allows Zynga to become a starting point for offers, with American Express Serve helping close the loop on redemptions.

“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of customers in our target market spending time on these (social gaming) platforms. If we can integrate and make their lives easier and customize things like offers and deals and move money back and forth in a social way, that’s tremendously powerful,” Schulman said.

This is another example of how American Express is trying to be aggressive using social media to keep its business relevant to users. It’s been working with Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook to distribute offers that can be saved to their American Express card. And it’s growing its presence on Facebook, including a Serve Facebook app that allows friends to pay each other.

I think the partnership makes a lot of sense, and could give American Express another way to reach younger users. And for Zynga, it’s another way to drive more usage and it builds on other recent offline rewards promotions. In March, for example, Zynga partnered with Frito Lay to put codes in specially marked bags of chips that would unlock certain virtual goods inside games. If it can expand on this relationship with American Express, it can show how it can make more money off its more than 65 million users.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Rosenblatt, who was Quattro Wireless’ SVP of advertising sales before it was bought by Apple, told Ad Age that the new paid product will appear mid-summer. He said there will be more ad products launched that will build off a newly redesigned app, set to appear in June.

“A special (offer) is one tactic that could be used by a merchant, but there’s lots of other ways to drive loyalty between merchants and consumers, and that’s what our goal is,” he told Ad Age.

The hiring shows that Foursquare is really working on figuring out the big monetization question that’s been hanging over the location-based service. Foursquare has eschewed traditional banner ads, but like a lot of social networks and publishers, it’s looking for non-obtrusive ways for brands and advertisers to reach out its 20 million users.

With the updated offers product, Foursquare will allow merchants to pay for special placement of personalized local offers. It will also use its Explore technology to better target the offers to users, who will check-ins to redeem them. Currently merchants can list special offers for their location for free, but the new ad product will ensure they can get better reach for their offers. Foursquare also recently announced it would charge merchants $10 to instantly verify their business instead of doing it through the mail. Ultimately, Foursquare is hoping that it can be a paid resource for merchants, helping them draw in new customers and keep them loyal.

Foursquare still has a lot to prove in showing how it can turn its network into a money maker. But with a team that’s well over 100 people now, Foursquare seems to have decided it need a few veterans to lead the charge.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• NewNet Q3: Facebook remakes headlines in social media

Springpad essentially uses bookmarklets, browser extensions and its mobile and tablet apps to grab information off the Web for later viewing, but unlike other note-taking apps, Springpad tries to structure that information and add context. For instance, if you “spring” a review of a restaurant or a movie, the service will recognize the information for what is, adding to your notes information about opening hours and local box office show times as well as links to dinner reservation or ticket purchasing services. Users then store all of those items in individual notepads, which they can make public to the whole Web or keep as private files.

The new update allows users to share their notebooks with one another, publicly or privately, similar to collaboration features on Evernote. For instance, a family could share grocery or to-do lists among its members. A book club can keep a running list of reading ideas and cooks can trade recipe ideas. Users can share notebooks privately among friends, or they can make notebooks public, allowing any Springpad member to follow another’s particular interest. The feature is particular useful, since I might be fascinated by one member’s recipe collection, but have no desire to read his collections of religious or political essays. The tools allow me to selectively follow what I find interesting and filter out the rest. Here’s a video Springpad produced to highlight the new features:

Like Pinterest, Springpad relies heavily on images to represent the items and notebooks, leading to a stunning visually layout within the application. But according to co-founder and business development VP Jeff Janer, Springpad is adding many more layers of contextual information to make the service into a sophisticated social collaboration tool.

“We want to form active micro-communities that revolve around particular interests,” Janer said. “Pinterest is focused on inspiration that may lead to a transaction, but there’s not really any collaboration there.” While Janer isn’t dismissing inspiration – which has made Pinterest an overnight success – he said Springpad sees a lot more potential in inspiration-oriented networking than in simply driving customers to retailer Websites, though such transactions are a key part of Springpad’s business model as well.

A mixed bag of revenue

Like Pinterest, Springpad takes a little off the top from any transaction originating from its notebooks, whether it’s a CD from Amazon or a movie ticket from Fandango. But Janer said Springpad’s primary business model will be based on advertising and offers. With detailed information about each user’s interests, Springpad’s advertisers can tailor specific coupons, based on the exact items they have stored in their notebooks. If you have saved a specific Sony HD TV in a gadgets notebook, Sony could ship you a discount offer specifically for that TV, Janer said.

Springpad has added a few other features with the new update as well. It’s introduced natural language understanding features to its search and item creation bar. So typing “Call Jeff tomorrow” into the add item bar will automatically generate a reminder task, which is then automatically synced with Google Calendar. It’s also generating alerts, based on items in stored in notebooks. If you a add a movie trailer, it will send you a notice when the film is available in your area and later generate another note when its is released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Springpad is still a relatively small operation. It launched in 2008 with funding of $7 million, and has since grown to 3 million registered users and a staff of 17. Much of that growth has been fairly recent driven by its mobile apps.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The state of cross-platform media measurement
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter

Micromat’s TechToolPro 6 is the bundle headliner this time around, offering some of the most comprehensive diagnostic and repair tools for your OS X system available anywhere. TechToolPro 6 is the most recent version and normally retails for $99.99 on its own. It checks your drives for potential errors or signs of failure, helps you rebuild your disk directories and optimize performance, plus recovers data from corrupt drives.

Another highlight is Postbox 3, the latest iteration of one of the best options out there for power email users who aren’t satisfied with what the build-in Mail.app offers. It’s a better fit and better designed than Microsoft’s Outlook for the Mac, and it’s a great Gmail client, too. The only downside is that there is no Exchange support, but it has a load of organization and filtering features that make tackling even the most unruly of inboxes a much easier task. Postbox 3 is normally $30 on its own.

One more app on the list that merits closer inspection is Neverwinter Nights 2. It’s a few years old now, but the game really stands up well despite its age. RPG fans will love it, especially if you enjoyed the first installment or if you’re a fan of games in the Diablo vein. Ordinarily, Neverwinter Nights 2 retails for $20 on the Mac App Store.

There are eight other apps in the bundle, too, as well as one more for the first 15,000 buyers. There is something for everyone, including the FontPack Pro Master edition, which ordinarily retails for $300 and includes every typeface designed by the SummitType font foundry (handy for designers), and Hear, an app that adds audio equalizer options to every app on your Mac (nice for the audiophiles in the crowd).

The deal lasts until Dec. 21, so you still have another 16 days to decide if it’s tantalizing enough to merit your hard-earned cash.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• How social discovery is transforming entertainment
• New challenges for the IT organization

The two obvious trends in local deals lately is public offerings, by Groupon and LivingSocial, and the rising competition from web giants like Google and Facebook. But the more I see of American Express in this space, the more I think it stands a chance to be the next major player to watch in this field.

The credit card company is 162 years old. But you wouldn’t know it by the way it’s been throwing itself into social media and activating local deals and discounts through emerging social channels. With its Smart Offers API, a platform that allows third-party deal services to build upon its payment system, it’s been able to partner with Foursquare, SCVNGR and, most recently, Facebook to offer local deals to its members.

American Express has some 90 million card members worldwide, and its service is a simple and elegant way to offer a very robust and personalized deal service. While it only works for existing card members, it will have lot of reach with businesses. Altogether, if AmEx can execute, it could show many of the new deal companies how commerce, loyalty and offers are really done.

Here are some of the reasons I think so, which I expand on in a report for GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

Multiple Hats: With its unique make-up as a card issuer, merchant acquirer and payment network, AmEx has direct relationships with both consumers and merchants unlike other credit card companies, which work with acquiring banks. This allows it to appeal directly to both groups and enables it to quickly strike deals with third parties like Foursquare and Facebook.

Valuable Data: Because of its structure, it commands a vast amount of data that is valuable for merchants, helping them understand how effective their deals are, how people are spending money on their visits and how often they’re returning. It’s all helpful in “closing the loop” and helping businesses measure their return on investment and seeing how they need to tweak their outreach.

Linchpin: AmEx is well positioned to appeal to merchants and brands. It’s already established a relationship with companies big and small and it’s got a very easy way for them to implement deals. They not only get information but they don’t have to train staff to learn how to redeem coupons. That’s one catch that can hold up some deals; employees aren’t always ready to handle them.

Modest Cut: AmEx is also not looking to take a big 50 percent cut of deals like many services. American Express vice president of global marketing capabilities David Wolf told me that the deals are negotiated individually and small businesses using AmEx’s new self-serve product Go Social don’t pay anything. The company sees a revenue opportunity in providing advanced analytics or pay-for-performance campaigns down the road, but right now it’s primarily looking at just driving more sales and taking its usual transaction fees.

Consumer Brand: Consumers have a lot to like, too. AmEx deals are showing up on popular social services like Facebook and Foursquare, and their likes, interests and check-ins are helping determine what deals they see. That’s another big issue with some of these deal sites. Their discounts are often not relevant for a user, so many just ignore them. Also, consumers can take advantage of AmEx’s system with minimal effort. With AmEx, members are just using the cards they already have. And with the Facebook partnership, AmEx is offering not only deals but membership rewards and early access to events. This builds upon American Express’ existing work in building loyalty with its members.

Deal Army: Groupon and Living Social have thousands of sales people, which have helped fuel their growth but AmEx has thousands of client managers and representatives of its own spread across different areas — membership rewards, merchant services, global advertising and sponsorships — that all interface with millions of business clients. They’re all now being tasked with presenting these deal opportunities to businesses. That’s a formidable force that already has their foot in the door of businesses.

If AmEx makes this massive deal flow army a priority, it shouldn’t be hard to convince many existing partners to sign on. That should help with one concern I had about AmEx, what kind of deal volume it will be able to muster. It’s not only about getting personalized deals but also having enough offers overall to keep people interested and coming back regularly.

For more on why I think American Express could be a major player in the local deals space and also what challenges it faces, read my report at GigaOM Pro. (subscription required)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How American Express could be a monster in the local-deals market
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Listening platforms: finding the value in social media data

The Dealmap allows users to see local deals from more than 150 sources on a map. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has attracted more than two million users and generated more than 85 million monthly visitors for its partners. The Dealmap has distribution agreements with more than 50 partners including Microsoft , CityGrid, Local.com, MerchantCircle, MyPoints, Savings.com, SuperMedia, and T-Mobile.

The company said in a blog post that it chose to be acquired by Google because they share a desire to help save people money and that the search giant is equipped to help accelerate The Dealmap’s growth. For now, it looks like the company will continue to aggregate deals for its partners and provide its core services to users. But we’ll have to find out the long-term plans when the integration work is completed.

The interesting thing will be to see how The Dealmap affects Google’s local deal service Google Offers. It’s an important priority for the company that’s being paired with its near field communication Google Wallet product. As the service expands to more cities, Google will have to show it can continue to source a good volume of deals and maintain engagement with users. The Dealmap was popular for helping people find and discover local deals, and it seems like that experience should be helpful in building a better local discount offering. It was able to get a pull together a lot of deals: more than 400,000 deals and $10 million in savings available each day. That will be important to ensure that Google Offers scales well.

You need to get a good amount of deals to keep people coming back, and they have to be relevant and easy to access for users. Right now, Google Offers is still rolling out with more of a daily deal approach. But as Living Social and Groupon move toward more real-time instant deals, Google will need to step up and get more deals going in a more timely manner.

The Dealmap pick-up won’t address all the challenges ahead for Google, but it’s a sign that it’s still investing in this area and it’s also keeping a good start-up out of the hands of competitors. I thought Microsoft might want to buy the Dealmap after partnering with it for Bing Deals. Now, it’s up to Google to get the most out of its new deal acquisition. It’s not Groupon, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How American Express could be a monster in the local-deals market
• What Groupon Can Teach Us About Shopping and the Web
• Shopping Matters When it Comes to Location-Based Apps