The big-if not the biggest-marketing buzzword. There is no shortage of articles and opinions on this topic. In fact, googling the term “loyalty programs” yields about 1.6 million hits; googling “credit card loyalty programs” yields about 1.1 million.
What I won’t do in this paper is rehash a lot of what readers probably already know about this topic. This is a very well-trodden area in the payments space especially, and no shortage of data exists. What I will do is to put things in a different context and even challenge some of what might be regarded as the “universal truths” about loyalty. Along the way, I will also offer a few thoughts on where we might be headed as it relates to payment card loyalty programs, specifically.