HOMEGROWN e-loyalty programme firm Taggo has secured close to $1 million of funding for overseas expansion.

The funding is led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Jungle Ventures and Spring Singapore's venture capital arm Spring Seeds Capital.

Two-year-old Taggo operates a digital marketing platform that helps merchants promote repeat sales by turning their Facebook pages into "fan clubs", a form of loyalty programme.

Consumers join such fan clubs by registering their mobile numbers on a merchant's website and "liking" the merchant's fan club page, which will automatically be translated to a "like" on the merchants' Facebook page.

To enjoy, say, a restaurant's promotions or discounts, fans just have to give their mobile number to the cashier for entering into the restaurant's fan club web page to verify he is a fan.

Once the mobile number is entered, a wall post will be generated on the fan's Facebook newsfeed page saying he just enjoyed a fan benefit.

The wall post acts as a viral marketing tool. It will also automatically generate a Facebook advertisement to show up on his friend's Facebook pages.

Taggo makes money from selling these advertisements to payment service providers like Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore's (Nets), Visa and MasterCard.

More than 100 restaurants and retail outlets here - including Rocky's Pizza, adidas and EpiCentre - are using Taggo's platform to market on Facebook. So far, most of the promotions at these retail outlets are run by Nets.

"Our goal is to revolutionize the global loyalty industry," said Mr Aneace Haddad, founder and chief executive officer of Taggo.

"We want to make loyalty programs more powerful, easier to deploy, and very low cost, if not free for merchants," he added.

The only cost to merchants is the traditional 1 to 3 per cent transaction fee paid to payment firms like Nets, Visa and MasterCard. Merchants do not need to pay for using Taggo's platform.