Loyalty and rewards

Theresa Dold joins LevelUp in the new role of vice president of agency strategy to head the company’s focus on restaurant engagement. Dold previously was director of product at sweetgreen, a fast-casual salad chain that last fall stopped accepting cash payments at some of its stores.

Until now, Amazon's moves seemed like cautious pokes at the deeply ingrained habit of going to a store and paying with a plastic card. Furthermore, any competitors may have seen Amazon's lacking retail store presence as a buffer that kept them at least temporarily safe from the same fate that befell the bookselling world. How naive they were.

Amazon is working aggressively to change the way people shop — especially in the grocery space — but not all of its activities focus on products and store design. The e-commerce giant has also influenced a lot about how people use their payment cards.

Amazon’s new Prime rewards program is the latest way the tech titan is cultivating a loyal use base. To retain and engage customers, banks should follow Amazon’s lead and layer in more value-added services.

A deeper dive into the workings of the Amazon Prime Reload program should give the card payments industry serious cause for concern.

The trade association has teamed up with Retail Benefits to create "CU Perks," a shopping rewards program for CU members in the Pelican State.

In a move that will certainly cause friction across the card payments industry, Amazon announced a new service called Amazon Prime Reload, which incentivizes newcomers to the program to load funds using a debit card or bank account with a 2% cash back on purchases.

ExxonMobil's contactless and mobile payment system, Speedpass, is well known as a way to help drivers accelerate the payment process after they fill up on gas. The system's latest updates focus less on the payment process and more on flexibility and rewards.

Google is getting in on the card-linked offers movement with a new API enabling merchants to send targeted offers to consumers who store a loyalty card within Android Pay.

Merchants increasingly sing the praises of analyzing customer payment data to learn more about spending habits and deliver customized offers through mobile devices. American Express is kicking off a project to do the same with corporate travel data.

American Express has made several attempts to escape its image as a card for the elite, with efforts such as the Bluebird prepaid card and the OptBlue pricing program for small merchants. Its latest move is focused on rewards for small-business owners.

Netspend is focusing on "overlooked and emerging segments" to expand its prepaid card services, according to company president Chuck Harris. And it's making some very unconventional alliances along the way.

UBS Group AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, plans to introduce a premium card this month as it seeks to strengthen ties with affluent Americans.

IBM's new Blockchain Founder Accelerator could better position the distributed ledger technology as a platform for mainstream payments, but the technology giant wants to start with baby steps.

Brick-and-mortar retailers are using technology to transform their physical stores into an Amazon-like digital experience.

Royal Bank of Canada is applying blockchain technology to its loyalty program, in an effort to make its rewards more tangible and accessible.

JPMorgan Chase, which already made a $10 million investment in mobile payments and loyalty provider LevelUp, renewed its interest in a just-completed $50 million round of funding.

Every year, payments experts gather at SourceMedia's Card Forum to discuss the trends shaping our industry. Here are some of the major topics discussed at this year's event in Austin, Texas.

In banking, as in any other industry, a company's brand is a precious commodity. But as the digital economy matures, card issuers are finding a greater need to hand the reins over to their partners.

An upcoming release of Android Pay may have a biometric facial recognition component named “Visual ID," according to a recent teardown of the app. This functionality could open up numerous possibilities for merchants.