The programmes that reward shoppers with points and plastic cards aren’t keeping pace with how rapidly retailers and customers are changing.
They’re misaligned with how customers live and shop and pay, particularly in mobile-first markets like South Africa and the broader African region.
A region that is anticipating growth of 18.1% over and that craves the ingenuity and value brought by mobile-driven rewards, gamification incentives, cashbacks and deeper financial inclusion.
Loyalty remains a key driver of customer engagement, but the traditional machinery that drives it no longer makes sense.
Retailers are often left carrying the weight of contingent liabilities for points that may never be redeemed, while customers are still trying to manage physical cards.
Traditional programmes are often fragmented, and many over-emphasise basic discounts and points while not really leveraging the data they gain to deliver true customer personalisation journeys.
The result is poor differentiation and engagement, even when membership numbers are high, and this dissatisfaction has seen a gentle side shuffle away from plastic cards and complicated systems towards an ecosystem-based approach to loyalty.
Partners, cross-brand earning, communities and interchangeable rewards across platforms and companies are taking their place. And these capabilities are being largely driven by an old technology on the block – blockchain.
Web3 and blockchain have been around for a while and are changing the physics of loyalty in ways that simplify the process for consumers and retailers alike. Instead of points sitting dormant and creating long-term liabilities for retailers, their value becomes tokenised.
These points can be instantly transferred, redeemed and earned and work at the point of customer decision-making. It’s loyalty at the edge.
Web3 allows retailers to apply instant, per-consumer-centric rewards at the point of transaction on such a granular level that two customers standing at neighbouring tills can receive personalised offers in real time based on who they are and how they shop. Blockchain handles the trust.
There are no next-day reconciliations or batching or waiting to see if loyalty data matches what the till saw.
Instead, payments and settlements are one and the same and take place at the exact moment of purchase, even when multiple parties have to be paid out at the same time. In traditional systems that level of coordination is impossible.
This real-time flow also removes the financial drag that comes with loyalty programmes. Contingent liabilities clog up accounting systems and create long-term risk, which is frustrating, especially when retailers can see the potential value of a smooth loyalty programme in building customer loyalty and retention. Web3 and blockchain remove this structural weight by building digital rewards that behave like currency and that can be settled, issued and redeemed instantly.
Adding even more value is the fact that these technologies are redesigning the economics of payments. Card transactions cost money in merchant fees, but imagine if retailers could avoid those fees? Web3 wallet payments bypass old cost architectures which means money saved can be reinvested back into consumer rewards or returns on investment.
Loyalty then stops being a cost centre and becomes a proper engine for growth, one that’s funded by the infrastructure that enables it.
Another huge benefit for retailers is that all the data and insights are sitting in a digital repository ready to be interpreted into personalised consumer journeys that deliver value. Imagine not serving a customer baby food adverts long after their child has finished school?
Or not targeting consumers with products they no longer buy? Web3 gives retailers the ability to sit inside the data so the consumer’s advertising journey is matched by their life one.
This value stretches beyond corporate retail and into spaza shops, taxi associations and informal traders who can now capitalise on loyalty programmes because blockchain levels the playing field. The same rails that handle enterprise customers can hold micro-merchants as well.
This is the new era of loyalty, which is fast and fluid and interoperable at scale. Blockchain and web3 are rewriting how retailers talk to consumers and finally getting loyalty to move at the same speed that customers expect.
