Cryptocurrencies are replacing bonus points that bore customers

Western consumers are no longer interested in traditional loyalty programs with boring bonuses and miles. To revive their interest and attract a younger audience, companies - from online stores to car rental services - are starting to offer cryptocurrency bonuses, says Bloomberg.

Cheaper and more interesting

Cryptobonuses for Western companies are a necessary measure. Traditional customer loyalty programs are no longer interested. The results of a survey conducted by the Colloquy Center showed that in the US and Canada, more than 50% of loyal customers only accumulate bonuses, but do not spend them, and more than 30% leave programs without even using the accumulated points.

• Businesses hope that cryptocurrencies will help change this trend, especially among young consumers (according to a Finder.com survey , one in five millennials own e-currency).
• There are a variety of ideas behind the new loyalty programs. The largest Japanese online store Rakuten is going to issue its own cryptocurrency as bonuses, which can be exchanged for cash. Car rental service Rent-a-Car offers drivers to pay regular bonuses in bitcoins. Computing giant HP is trying to build a more sophisticated blockchain-based loyalty program for gas station chains, where gas stations will be able to offer drivers promotions, coupons, and other rewards based on location, speed, and fuel consumption based on the technology.
• All this should not only attract young people, but also help companies save money - now American companies pay $ 35 billion to intermediary companies for processing and maintaining loyalty cards. Switching to crypto-bonuses will save at least 80% - processing in the blockchain actually costs nothing. The innovation may even improve the reporting of companies: now unused bonus points are accounted for as liabilities, and electronic money can be included in revenue.
• Of course, without intermediaries will not do here. Several large startups are already working in the field of crypto-loyalty. Quibbee is developing turnkey programs for its own cryptocurrencies for brands, DigitalBits is developing a cashback system in cryptocurrencies for bonuses from PepsiCo and Mars loyalty programs in Canada.

Most of these programs have one drawback - if it involves not only specially created cryptocoins, which can only be spent on company services (and what is the difference with regular bonuses then?), this means that buyers will be able to spend the earned cryptocurrency anywhere - the task of linking to the brand of the source company is not solved. It is not surprising that many companies are not ready to part with decent amounts of real (albeit digital) money - for the consumer, Bitcoin loyalty programs sometimes do not look very profitable. For example, in the Rent-a-Car program, the driver receives $25 in bitcoins for every $5,000 spent - a so-so offer.

What do I get from this?

So far, the most famous attempt to use cryptocurrency in the loyalty program of the LavkaLavka farmer cooperative ended with searches in the company, but now it continues to work . When cryptocurrencies are finally legalized in Russia, loyalty programs will be one of the predictable areas for their use - after all, even in a Russian court, bitcoins were compared in status with airline bonus miles.

Liana Faizova