PokitPal Teams Up With Visa to Make Mobile Payments More Rewarding

Good news for Visa cardholders in Australia: you’ll soon have a whole new reason to go out and shop thanks to a newly-minted partnership between Visa and PokitPal, the mobile rewards platform. With the two working together, Visa cardholders will get access to a range of rewards for making everyday purchases.

Starting October, Visa cardholders—both credit and debit—will have access to the PokitPal system, which can provide instant rewards, even cashback rewards, to cardholders who shop normally. Discounts and product giveaways are also on tap here, and cardholders can get notification about available rewards through a standard smartphone. Transactions are instantly verified, and rewards offered accordingly.

Gary Cobain, PokitPal’s CEO, noted “Traditionally, loyalty programs have been limited to the large retailers because many organizations lack the budget and resources necessary for effective implementation. The PokitPal platform allows businesses of all sizes to entice new customers and encourage repeat business using the latest mobile marketing tools.”

Cobain’s remarks are, in a nutshell, why rewards programs even exist. It not only entices repeat business at the places where people buy and sell, but also on the platforms that make the rewards happen in the first place. Why pay with a credit card that offers no rewards when you can pay with a credit card that does? Unless there’s some other reason—the non-rewards card has a lower rate and you don’t pay it off every month, for example—then going with the rewards program is just a smart idea. Since the Visa / PokitPal system offers easy notifications, it improves the odds that customers will actually see rewards happen, and that in turn improves the chance of continued use. It’s basic behavioral psychology, really.

Thus PokitPal and Visa are doing each other a good turn here. Visa is providing PokitPal a big new user base to work with, and PokitPal is giving Visa a means to keep customers. We’ll have to see how it all works out in the end, but it’s the kind of recipe that should bear fruit in short order.