As consumer brands look to grow their businesses, loyalty programs have become an essential strategy for adding, engaging and ultimately keeping their customers. According to nearly 12,000 members belonging to more than 180 U.S. loyalty and rewards programs surveyed for the Bond Loyalty Report1, a whopping 81 percent stated they are more likely to be a repeat customer if their brand of choice offers a loyalty program to sweeten the deal. And sweet it is: consumers want to use mobile devices to check point balances, redeem rewards, find store locations and more, all in one convenient, reliable place.
“Today consumers expect to move quickly and seamlessly between online and offline experiences, especially with the brands they regularly use and trust,” says Doug Rappoport, vice president, Visa’s global offers & loyalty team. Furthermore, they want to engage with these brands’ loyalty programs from their mobile devices and easily redeem their points.
To help loyalty programs satisfy these evolving expectations, Visa has developed Visa Rewards Redemption, a technology solution designed to deliver innovative functionality to loyalty programs, enabling them to provide their members (who are Visa credit accountholders) greater flexibility in the redemption of points or other forms of program awards. Through an integration with Visa Rewards Redemption APIs, participating loyalty programs can offer their members the ability to drive on-the-go engagement and points redemption using items most everyone carries: a Visa credit card and a mobile phone. Participating loyalty programs can utilize this technology solution to help members get immediate value out of their rewards points or other forms of program awards beyond the typical constraints of a hotel chain, airline or retailer.
Visa is proud to have La Quinta Inns & Suites be the first client in the travel industry to use Visa Rewards Redemption. La Quinta just launched Redeem Away!, a benefit of the La Quinta Returns loyalty program exclusively for Visa credit cardholders. It allows Returns members to redeem their Returns points with a mobile phone after making a qualifying purchase using a linked Visa credit card—at more than 1 million U.S. retail and online locations2. After the member makes a qualifying purchase, La Quinta sends a text notification to their mobile phone, inviting them to redeem points for that purchase. By responding “yes,” La Quinta deducts the points from the member’s La Quinta Returns account and the consumer receives a credit on the linked Visa card statement for the purchase amount in approximately 10 days. More information about Redeem Away! can be found at: http://www.LQ.com/redeemaway.
As merchants and issuers increasingly look to enable a mobile-centric loyalty experience to boost member engagement, Visa Rewards Redemption provides a new opportunity to help them do so.
1 Source: "The 2016 Bond Loyalty Report", Bond Brand Loyalty, April 2016
2 Based on number of merchant store locations in all eligible merchant categories. Merchant must be classified in correct merchant category for payment processing in order to redeem points.
