Discover Financial Services is expanding efforts to tie its credit card rewards to social media by enabling gamers to redeem their points for gift cards and online credits.
The Riverwoods, Ill. company on Dec. 1 said it has expanded its partnership with virtual game distributor Zynga Inc., which makes FarmVille, CityVille and The Pioneer Trail. The deal enables Discover customers to convert $25 worth of cash-back rewards points into a $50 Zynga gift card.
New customers that apply for a Discover More card will receive a gift card worth $100 in Zynga points after their first purchase. As part of the deal, Discover’s brand will show up within Farmville games when characters use Discover cards or visit a Discover farm. Consumers play the game is primarily on Facebook.com, but they also may access it through Microsoft Corp.’s MSN games website.
The partnership is “a major play on social media that really nobody in the card business is doing,” says Brian Riley, a senior research director in the retail banking and cards practice at TowerGroup. The gaming rewards will help Discover appeal more to young customers, he adds.
Discover already offers its customers the option to exchange $45 in cash-back rewards for $50 in Farmville credits, according to Mike Boush, Discover vice president of e-business. But this new offer will be a better deal for cardholders.
Industry analysts praise Discover’s Zynga deal as the latest example of its ability to be innovative in rewards programs.
“Everyone in the card space is looking for new ways of offering attractive rewards to their [customers], and this is just another example, in my mind, of that approach,” says Jason Arnold, a research analyst covering the financial services sector at RBC Capital Market in San Francisco. “Seeing [Discover] moving into this area as well makes sense to me, as it is exploring all the different ways to get your cardholders using your card.”
Discover already has made multiple forays into social media, especially via Facebook (
“This is the first step in a broader strategy to bring together the online customer and the offline use of our product, and the rewards,” says Boush, adding the strategy will help differentiate Discover from its competitors.
The card company is not alone in the “game-ification” of its payments, and Zynga works with other financial companies, including Capital One Financial Corp. As does Discover, the McLean, Va.-based bank has its own branded farm on Farmville.
Such efforts largely are still experiments, analysts say.
“Financial services providers are looking for the best ways to integrate social-networking opportunities into their marketing and delivery,” says Beth Robertson, director of payments research at Javelin Strategy and Research. “[It’s] short-term in nature, which will allow Discover to readily assess the benefit of using social gaming as a vehicle for building brand awareness.”
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