BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire) - Just four months ago, LevelUp reached 500,000 users. So, what did we do? We put our heads down and immediately started racing towards 1 million. And today, after a little black magic and a lot of sleepless nights, we've made it. We. reached. one. million. users. (!!!!!)

If you're thinking, "That's a lot of people, maybe mobile payments is going to go mainstream in 2013," well then we're on the same page! But how did we get here? Well, first, we devised a very specific strategy to try to make mobile payments appeal to the mainstream. Then, we came up with three major ways to get LevelUp in front of those potential users even faster. Here they are!

• Migration Tools: Merchants can seamlessly transition their loyalty card programs over to LevelUp without losing any data. As more and more merchants ditch their plastic loyalty cards for LevelUp, their customers are eased into the mobile payment revolution.
• Facebook Integration: When LevelUp users discover a great offer on the LevelUp app, they can share it to Facebook for all their friends to claim seamlessly... without ever even needing to leave their news feed. Each offer that's shared is seen an average of 1,000 times and clicked on by five friends.
• LevelUp White-Label: Merchants are jumping on board with LevelUp White-Label, because it's the first payment offering ever to give merchants a fully branded mobile payment app, along with the user scale and technology behind LevelUp. And again, as bigger merchants jump on board with LevelUp, so do their customers.

So, we've reached 1 million! Now what? Sleep? Drink? Dance?

We wish! But no...

Now we put our heads back down, and start working on our next goal: transforming LevelUp from a product into a platform.

"We're trying to revolutionize the way people pay. But to do that, we need everyone in the payments space to be able to innovate with us and help propel the moment forward," said Seth Priebatsch, chief ninja of LevelUp. "Would Facebook have transformed the way we socialize without an open API? No. Would Apple have transformed the way we use mobile devices if only they could build apps? Definitely not! So, as we're trying to push forward the mobile payments revolution, we've decided to make LevelUp into an app store at the payments layer... like what Facebook did at the social layer. We're just now finalizing our API and the LevelUp White-Label SDK, so everyone can join in and drive payments change together."

When we say everyone, what exactly do we mean? We mean:

• Merchants should be able to offer consumers their own mobile payment app loaded with value, tailored to that specific business, but running on our core platform.
• POS players should be able to offer merchants a solution with updates that keep pace with rapidly evolving payment technology.
• Online food ordering sites should be able to accept LevelUp as a method of payment, so their restaurants can seamlessly reward customers, whether customers pay for the food online or in-store.
• App developers should be able to take LevelUp's SDK and integrate it into their own apps, or extend the functionality in crazy cool ways. Think fitness apps that reward users for setting personal bests with Levelup credit to a health-food store, or smart watches that let people pay with their wrist and view their receipt without pulling out their phone, or review sitesthat verify a user has actually paid at a store before writing a review. Cool, right?

This app store at the payments layer is how we plan to continue fueling the payments revolution onward, because we're opening up the opportunity for everyone in the payments space to get involved. We're in this for the long-haul, and we want you to join in, too. Intrigued? Head towww.thelevelup.com.

About LevelUp

LevelUp is a part of SCVNGR which is backed by Google Ventures, Balderton Capital, Continental Advisors, Highland Capital, Transmedia Capital and T-Venture.