Loyalty and rewards

PayPal is moving ahead with plans to integrate with both Amex and Discover, and the details of how PayPal will work with these card networks are starting to take shape.

With only 17 million users, compared to PayPal’s 300 million, Honey seems minuscule. But this is PayPal's largest acquisition ever by price, and it far eclipses the $800 million PayPal spent in 2013 for Braintree, which owned Venmo.

American Express is launching a credit card that provides consumers in the U.K. cash back for reaching physical activity goals.

The Peach State is the latest to offer gamified savings programs as an incentive to draw in deposits and improve consumers' behavior.

Readers react to the FDIC's proposal allowing banks to hire ex-cons, regulators looking into climate-change risk at banks, whether rewards programs drive loyal customers and more.

By attaching to Honey and its base of 17 million mostly young, female consumers who use the platform to find the best price on e-commerce deals, PayPal also is aiming to get closer to merchants with customized offers.

Bryce VanDiver and Daniela Hawkins at Capco make the case that offering easy-to-use payment rewards is the way to win the loyalty of digital-only customers.

The challenge is to digitize digital currency rewards in such a way where a retailer could issue its own token, and that token could be used at a multitude of retailers, says cryptocurrency lawyer Felix Shipkevich.

While American Express initially lost customers after JPMorgan Chase introduced the popular Sapphire Reserve premium card in 2016, the firm said it's seen a 60% increase in growth in Platinum accounts.

PayPal is adding rewards to its Venmo credit card in a way that seems to echo Apple's strategy with Apple Card.