The future of retail is in loyalty and payments innovation

The integration of card linking, Open Banking and loyalty with mobile payments and mobile checkout is a hugely interesting area for retailers, according to Mike Cadden, IT Director (Sales, Marketing and Customer Services) at Office Depot.

“It will open up a whole new space for brands and local high streets to create seamless, branded or hyper-local loyalty programmes with no friction at the Point of Sale,” he says in a LinkedIn post

“Of course, security and compliance will be a huge risk, as will customer adoption, but from a customer engagement and customer understanding point of view we may well see a real step change this year.”

Loyalize

Cadden, who was part of the 2020 RTIH Innovation Awards judging panel, was responding to the news that white label engagement platform Loyalize had raised £250,000 in pre-seed funding.

Founded in 2019, the venture allows customers to get rewarded on transactions through connecting their payment cards, or bank accounts, to an existing loyalty programme.

It is being backed by fund investors SFC Capital, along with top-up contributions from new and existing angels.

It will use the cash to add members to its development team and build out new platform features, with a strong focus on Open Banking and payments.

“Closing this pre-seed round is a significant milestone for us, even more so during a pandemic,” said Loyalize CEO David John

“It means we can ramp up our development efforts and start working on some exciting projects that we have planned for the rest of the year.

He concluded: “Loyalty, and certainly payments, is such a vibrant space right now - experiencing huge levels of growth - and I’m looking forward to rolling out a number of propositions over the coming months.”