Altcoin News Incent Brings Loyalty to the Blockchain With ‘Open Value’
Ryan Strauss | Nov 03, 2016 | 12:00
Incent Loyalty, an Australian-based company, wants to tap into the potential of loyalty rewards points through creating a tradable, “open-value” token called Incent, which customers use to gain and trade loyalty points near-instantly and worldwide. While low-cost blockchain technology helps to solidify storage, Incent Loyalty’s consumer facing applications can be personalized to align with the branding of merchant partners.
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Incent: Tokenizing Loyalty Rewards
To provide an easier customer experience, loyalty values will additionally still be displayed in terms of that particular region’s local currency. Through a partnership with Australian small and medium sized business group Smea, Incent already has access to over 30,000 merchants and has seen interest growing rapidly. With an ICO for Incent ongoing, the company has a growing resource pool to build upon its vision.
Through connecting blockchain to commerce, Incent will encourage use of cryptocurrency among merchants without succumbing to the difficulties of the at times costly and over-crowded Bitcoin blockchain.
Rob Wilson, CEO and co-founder of BitScan and Incent Loyalty, said that he first had the idea for the solution when he saw a plethora of plastic loyalty cards in a purse. Clearly, there was opportunity to rid of the inefficiencies of traditional loyalty programs and implement blockchain technology to unleash a new form of tradable value.
Incent Loyalty has been doing a vast majority of its business digitally, with users most commonly visiting from USA, UK, and Canada. According to the company, this reach demonstrates the global potential of loyalty programs. With early interest from pharmaceutical organizations, retailers, sports betting, and a growing amount of B2B and B2C opportunities emerging, early merchant interest has been considerable. Goals in the future include growing adoption further in brick and mortar stores.
With an estimated worth of the current US loyalty-rewards industry at $65Bn and with projections out to 2020 see this building to $100Bn, opportunity in the space remains immense.
“Currently, the points or ‘currency’ for these programs (such as air miles or loyalty points) are locked up in individual silos per store or consortia, while overhead costs remain from tracking, producing, and managing the plastic card accounts and internal databases,” Mr. Wilson remarked.
Incent is helping to prove that Blockchain technology indeed does lower costs and put forth a more appealing proposition for both retailers and customers looking to interface with cryptocurrency, for a cause we can all relate to.
The Incent token will have a finite supply. Its value at the point of sale will be determined by the open market. By incorporating such a program, merchants can elect to allow this value to be exchanged and spent outside of their walled garden. Cross-partnerships between merchants will enable for promotions and sales or usage of coupons to occur directly within the application. Moreover, customers will be able to cash out at any store through wireless technology built into their mobile handset.
Built upon the Waves, a robust blockchain platform, Incent will provide a friendly user experience for both merchants and customers while using the distributed network for infrastructural purposes. Incent already had a connection with the Waves team, and trusted Waves’ technology stack to help them realize a sound, background-operating blockchain backend. Waves’ Proof-of-Stake (POS) blockchain enables for increased scalability and speed.
Waves’ gateways in and out of fiat and options to incorporate trading for newly minted ICOs will allow the value of Incent to open up worldwide. As APIs for Incent develop, plugins will help the concept scale even further. By providing statistics and data to merchants, blockchains technology is being utilized in a new way to unleash value while improving a merchant’s brand and customer base.
What are your thoughts on the potential for use of loyalty points on blockchain technology? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Incent.
