CardLinx Pushes for Card-Linked Standards in Europe, Canada

The CardLinx Association is forming councils for Europe and Canada in an effort to facilitate standards for card-linked offers in those regions.

The association, whose members include Microsoft, Bank of America, First Data, Cardlytics, Facebook and others, has scheduled meetings for June 19 in London and June 22 in Toronto.

The meetings are scheduled to include representatives of Europe and Canada's largest banks, digital commerce platforms, global payment networks, processors, merchants, advertising companies and technology companies, the association says in a May 29 press release. The association invited the participants, who will make suggestions on the standards for card-linked offers, which are designed to reduce friction for merchants and consumers.

Card-linking enables consumers to redeem deals without paper coupons or promo codes. The CardLinx Association recently produced new standards to track the performance of advertising investments.

There is a growing interest in card-linked offers as companion to certain payment technology. VeriFone and CardSpring allow shoppers to redeem digital coupons by swiping their cards at merchants that use VeriFone Payware Connect Gateway. Other companies include Cardlytics, which connects its rewards technology to Facebook to increase speed; and processors such as Global Payments and Heartland that have partnered with digital marketing companies to provide card-linked offers. First Data provides the technology that underpins Foursquare's card-linked rewards program.