Boston Herald and Herald Media
By Donna Goodison

Shoppers can skip the hassle of clipping coupons each week and handing them to supermarket cashiers under a new Upromise program.

The Newton company has launched what’s billed as the grocery industry’s first national paperless coupon program. But instead of receiving a dollar off Huggies diapers at the register, the e-coupons’ values are credited toward Upromise members’ free college savings accounts.

Early next year, however, Upromise will extend the offer to shoppers who’d rather have that money deducted from their grocery receipts and not become members.

“The way the couponing program is going to succeed is if we get enormous scale,” president David Rochon said. “We’re talking millions of people to make it attractive to manufacturers and drive business to retailers.”

Currently, Upromise members can save up to $25 a month with e-coupons from 20 product manufacturers, but Rochon hopes to increase that to as much as $100.

The e-coupons can be redeemed through 160 grocery and drug retailers with some 21,000 locations nationally. In Massachusetts, they include Stop & Shop, Shaw’s, Hannaford Bros., Roche Bros., Atlantic Food Mart, CVS and Osco.

Upromises makes it money by charging the retailers an administrative fee for the service.

To use the program, shoppers must enroll as a Upromise member, which is free, and register their store loyalty cards on its Web site. When they click on the e-coupons they want to use, the e-coupons are automatically linked to their cards electronically. Members can print out their coupon lists so they remember what products to buy. And, once at the store, they need only swipe their loyalty cards, and their purchases are relayed to Upromise, which credits the e-coupons’ values to their college savings accounts.

“It is so much simpler than having to rifle through the Sunday circulars and clip the coupons and remember to bring them to the store and remember to hand them to the cashier,” Rochon said.

Ease of use and promoting customer savings is what prompted Quincy-based Stop & Shop to sign on to the program, spokesman Rob Keane said. “It requires no extra steps for cashiers or the consumer,” he said. “And, obviously, there’s no paper coupons needed, so it’s environmentally friendly.”