DigitalBits Project Puts Decentralized Blockchain Into Loyalty & Rewards
The ability to readily incorporate a loyalty program into a mobile payments platform is one of mobile payments’ greatest draws, and a new project from DigitalBits is out to make loyalty that much easier to work with. Only recently brought live, the DigitalBits program, built around the DigitalBits blockchain network, provides an elegant solution to some of the biggest problems a loyalty program can face.
DigitalBits’ blockchain was the product of a fork from the Stellar blockchain, and went live on March 19. With DigitalBits, anyone can create digital assets—more commonly, tokens—on the network, and incorporate these tokens into current operations. The tokens themselves are completely portable and transferable, and make them excellent fodder for loyalty programs where customers need to know quickly just how many more points it takes to get a free whatever.
What’s more, the user will then be able to trade these tokens on the DigitalBits Network, requiring only a few seconds to pose the transfer and a small fee, the amount of which will at last report be determined later by each company using the tokens.
The DigitalBits Project founder Al Burgio noted “Today’s loyalty and rewards industry is still stuck in the 1.0 era. People are collecting rewards that go unused due to friction and cost. Customers are unhappy. Businesses are unhappy. And, no one’s winning. The market is ripe for disruption and DigitalBits plans to support the next phase of Loyalty 2.0 programs with blockchain technology.”
We all know that the loyalty program is a great addition to a mobile payments project; it takes something that customers want—free stuff—and adds it directly to a program that can keep track of the necessary points involved and allows for ready application later on. That takes a lot of the grunt work—carrying a card, getting it stamped, and keeping track of that card for weeks or months—out of the equation, and makes the program easier to work with. A program that’s easy to work with is likely to be worked with, and the end result is better for customers and issuing businesses.
Good news all around, and we’ll likely hear more about this concept before long. The DigitalBits Project may well have given retailers just what they need: an easy-to-use loyalty program.