• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 5, 2013

Big-name partnerships may be one of the major drivers of various mobile shopping technologies.

In its efforts to expand usage of its MasterPass mobile wallet, MasterCard partnered with J. Crew so that starting this month shoppers can shop and then pay using MasterCard’s mobile wallet.

When Starbucks embraced Square mobile payments, many consumers nationally were introduced to the payment system.

In these cases, it’s not so much that the underlying technology becomes the driver as it is the enabler, leaving the driving to others.

No matter how great the technologies, sometimes they may simply languish if left without a big push by others.

Now the nifty little app SnipSnap, launched in 2012, is getting a boost from coupon behemoth Valpak, which is essentially porting its base of coupons from its 30,000 local advertisers over to the app.

With SnipSnap, consumers can take photos of coupons and keep them stored on their phones or tablets for later cash-in when they’re at a store.

Valpak found that many of its customers were familiar with the idea of photographing coupons.

“Consumer already were taking photos of Valpak coupons and storing them in SnipSnap,” said Nancy Martin, digital alliance and partnership specialist at Valpak. “This extends the reach so more of our offers are on more platforms.”

By moving the Valpak coupons to the SnipSnap app, shoppers can search the app for coupons based on their location.

The question, of which there is not yet an answer, is whether the behavior of consumers who take the Valpak coupons out of those blue envelopes mailed to 40 million households a month will change.

If they do move to the digital version of those coupons stored on an app, there could be a lot less clipping going on. And that could be a shot in the arm for mobile coupons.