Loyalty and rewards

Paytronix has spent the last few years developing a streamlined enrollment process for restaurants’ loyalty programs, but it relies on something relatively few consumers use: Apple Pay and Google Pay at the point of sale.

Mastercard’s real-time incentive marketing initiative is an acknowledgement that requiring consumers to take action to seize a special deal won’t work as well in the mobile age.

Traditional U.S. retail is in crisis at the hands of e-commerce. Bankers have a role to play to stop the bleeding through a combination of service, incentives, and payments technology.

Amazon’s incursion into brick and mortar has been aggressive, but not without its share of course corrections. The latest is a new round of price cuts at Whole Foods amid whispers of slow Prime traffic at the high-end grocer.

Under the hood of U.S. Bank's new mobile app; BofA, Wells Fargo sour on blockchain; are Fannie and Freddie too big?; and more from this week's most-read stories.

The U.K. prepaid gift card market is experiencing strong growth among consumers who buy them as gifts and for self-use, as well as among businesses that purchase them for customer loyalty programs and as employee incentives.

Beyond Apple’s glitzy product rollouts this week, the tech giant quietly notified users of new policies and a fee to Apple Pay Cash, the account in which the Apple Card deposits rewards.

A new feature from the microinvesting app Stash allows users to accumulate free stock in the companies where they spend money.

Traditional loyalty programs provide customers with tangible benefits, such as a free item with purchase or a reward for return visits. But these are limited in reach, argues James Roedding, vice president of product and data Rewards Network.

The new Apple Card wasn't just one product of many announced at the Steve Jobs Theater on Monday — it was the glue that binds all of Apple's new services together.