Blippy.com takes a swipe at rival Swipely, invites developers to build applications

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Call it the battle of the credit card swipes.

On the heels of rival Swipely’s funding and launch announcement Tuesday, Blippy plans to unveil a new feature at the Finovate conference in San Francisco which will let third-party software developers create their own applications using Blippy’s data.

The feature that will give developers a peek at how much users are spending, on what and where will have rigorous privacy controls that ensure that developers only have access to information that users want to share with them, co-founder Philip Kaplan said.

It remains to be seen what kind of applications developers will build. But one could imagine an application that offers tips on how to save money based on your purchases or makes movie recommendations based on what your friends have rented and enjoyed. Developers can apply here.

In other news, Blippy users, who are streaming more than $1.5 million in purchases each week, have greater control over what they share. They can opt to approve rather than automatically stream each purchase. They can also hide the price they paid for an item. And soon users will be able to link their supermarket club cards to Blippy and stream purchases from Safeway, Vons and other stores.

You can read our earlier coverage of Blippy here.

-- Jessica Guynn