Loyalty and rewards

Target is deploying Bluetooth beacons to offer time-sensitive deals and product recommendations to shoppers in its stores, and it has more ambitious plans for the technology later in the year.

American Express and Best Buy will allow consumers to make purchases on the retailer’s website using the reward points earned from their Amex spending.

Starbucks and American Express are both using cross-merchant rewards to boost their own volume, but with a very different philosophy driving each company's program.

Loyalty programs are typically viewed as a consumer-facing marketing play, but the shift to mobile commerce is bringing these programs deeper into the supply chain.

The credit union-led CU Wallet is working to attract small-business support by drawing on the local ethos that credit unions have nurtured for years, but it faces a formidable challenge as device makers such as Apple and Samsung bake their own wallets into the hardware.

Over the past few years, card-linked offers (CLO) have emerged as the next "it” digital advertising channel and is angling to underpin daily-deals platforms that haven’t delivered the long-term customer engagement once promised.

American Express' recovery from losing its partnership with Costco got a boost as it reached an agreement with Starwood Hotels to introduce a new payment card.