Card-linked Offers is a technology that automatically links retail discounts to a credit or debit card. It's the ultimate in convenience - no reloadable cards, no Cashback, nothing to remember. Just register a credit or debit card and automatically get the discount when you shop normally.
This sounds great in theory, but there are reasons why they are not used in SmartSpending.
The technology for Card-linked Offers has been around since 2009 when it was pioneered in the UK by a company called Reward. We loved the idea and partnered with them immediately, building full integration into Reward Gateway and slick technology to make card registration easy for our users.
Unfortunately, things didn't work out as we hoped. Retailers were not keen to join the program, worrying that the system required too little customer input to create real brand loyalty. They felt that customers would sign up, forget which retailers were in it, carry on shopping as normal and the retailers would just be giving up margin without creating any loyalty or upside.
Retailer support just didn't materialize. Few retailers joined and those that did gave pitifully small discount rates. We scrapped the project before we launched, saving our users from joining a failing program.
Only a few UK retailers were in support of the program, none of them being major brands - and the discounted rates had gotten smaller as retailers confirmed their suspicion that this type of offer would not create brand loyalty. In the USA and Australia, there is no retailer support.
So, there is nothing from a technology, buying or negotiation perspective that prevents us from using card-linked offers. We've simply rejected them because the lack of retailer support means they would not be a compelling nor useful part of our service.
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