InComm acquires Meridian Loyalty to expand corporate incentives business

Prepaid card and payments technology company InComm has acquired Meridian Loyalty, a full-service incentives business that caters to corporations.

The acquisition of Meridian Loyalty continues to build out InComm’s corporate incentives business as a way to diversify beyond its consumer prepaid business.

Based in St. Louis, Mo., Meridian creates loyalty and engagement programs for large corporations including Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and others across the globe. Meridian claims to be a pioneer in the incentives business by disrupting it in the 1980s and 1990s through the introduction of the industry’s first reloadable debit card, MeridiCard. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“The Meridian Loyalty team brings decades of experience and technological expertise in creating effective incentive, loyalty and engagement programs, and we could not be more excited to welcome them to the InComm family,” stated Brooks Smith, CEO of InComm in the press release.

The acquisition of Meridian Loyalty quickly follows on the heels of InComm’s purchase of Hallmark Cards’ prepaid business last month. The Hallmark Business Connections unit also caters to corporate employee engagement and incentive programs. The Hallmark business has three different levels of programs including an online mall for one-off prepaid cards, a managed program for medium-sized businesses and a full-service program for large corporations.

In March InComm acquired Linq3 to expand into the lottery industry. In 2018 it acquired the digital prepaid firm Gift Card Impressions to expand beyond physical cards and it also acquired American Express’ prepaid business called Serve in the same year.