Loyalty and rewards

HSBC worked with Maritz marketing to tap AI to predict which categories of rewards—travel, merchandise, gift cards or dining—consumers were most likely to use, factoring in their seasonal tendencies and past behavior.

The mobile app's popularity was joined at the hip with Starbucks gift cards and loyalty points, a formula that has traditionally been known to work well at other retailers through plastic cards.

The cashierless Amazon Go store is barely more than an experiment — it's live in only one location in Seattle, with plans for a handful of stores to follow this year — but it has already sparked a race to put similar models in place.

Following the path paved by the checkout-free Amazon Go concept, the newly merged Albertsons and Rite Aid are developing their own technologies for faster and more efficient checkouts.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is boosting rewards on its credit card with United Continental Holdings Inc. as the airline seeks to strengthen its loyalty program.

Citigroup Inc. is considering the idea, as well as other types of rewards for checking and savings accounts, to entice customers to sign up for its fledgling online bank, which it began to roll out nationwide earlier this year.

American Express is putting its involvement in the Hyperledger Project to the test, deploying blockchain technology with Boxed to enable the digital warehouse merchant to customize a rewards plan for Amex cardholders.

For Whole Foods, the potential to tap into the sheer volume of new customers via the Amazon Prime premium loyalty program is unprecedented, writes Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce.

Card issuers have long feared that third-party mobile wallets would erode their brand power by rendering them an invisible part of the payment process — and issuers like Barclays and TD Bank are finding ways to fight back.

Prime customers, who pay an annual fee for benefits such as free two-day shipping and access to Amazon’s video and music library, will now also get discounts at the upscale, organic supermarket that Amazon bought last year.

In the battle that’s raged over the last two years to win top-of-wallet status among luxury card users, the only clear winners may be savvy consumers who’ve learned how to game the system.

Mobile has been a boon for Cardlytics, which says more than half of the deals consumers choose now come from the mobile channel.

Samsung Pay has worked to differentiate itself from other mobile wallets with Samsung Rewards, and now it’s enriching that program with a cash-back option and the ability to purchase rewards points like airline mileage programs.

Barclays is one of the top five cobranded card issuers in the U.S., but because the bank has no branch network it must use unconventional marketing approaches — and unique technological innovations — to win customers.

Younger consumers are more willing to shop around compared to previous generations, and the on-demand economy means there is an expectation of instant gratification, writes Julian Wallis, retail director at Rambus.

Lacy Morris would seem to be in a tough spot as the main techie for a smaller coffee chain that's deploying mobile technology years after Starbucks dominated the market. But Starbucks has made missteps, he contends, leaving room for rivals to learn from those mistakes.

PayPal and Barclays have formed a strategic partnership enabling Barclays customers in the U.K. and U.S. to manage their Barclays and PayPal accounts within each app.

Amazon's increasingly weird ideas for getting products to Prime customers — grocery delivery, in-home delivery and now in-car delivery — point to an unsettling conclusion: Amazon, for all its market dominance, is pushing the limits of who it can reach with traditional package delivery.

Amazon.com Inc. has partnered with General Motors Co. and Volvo Cars to deliver packages to car trunks in 37 U.S. cities, as the e-commerce giant seeks new delivery methods for customers who may be wary of leaving packages outside or allowing couriers into their homes.

Major card brands have been competing to surpass each other with rewards and premium card offerings for decades, but American Express still views the premium card world as one it dominates.