American Express has announced that they are applying blockchain technology to the membership rewards program. Basically this means they are allowing individual merchants to create custom Membership Rewards programs for American Express cardholders. Coindesk probably does a better job explaining this than I will, so I’d recommend reading this. I guess this is a way of letting individual merchants tap into the membership rewards program without the long lead times we’ve seen previously with coalition loyalty programs such as the failed Plenti. I’d be interested to know what the smart contracts look like and what individual merchants are paying on a per point basis.
In any case, the first partner for this new program is Boxed.com. They are offering 5x Membership Rewards on select purchases.
Who needs Priority Pass, when you have a Jabbrrbox?
Jabbrrbox: An airport lounge all to yourself
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/jabbrrbox-airport-lounge/index.html
And this relates to the article how?
It doesn’t, I think Thomas just wanted to let us know because we asked for these types of interesting stories to help due to my vacation 🙂
so dumb. im always excited to see blockchain adoption buy financial institutions but this is just a buzzword play for now. what AMEX and Boxed are doing has nothing to do with the full potential of Blockchain. they could do the same shit with whatever other private channel software they come up with via Plenti or XYZ coalition rewards program. no reason to use a Hyperledger system.
however, this is a good start to a potential future where all rewards programs across multiple financial institutions and banks use the same rewards program and call it the “Blockchain Membership Rewards” program or something like that. then no more of this transfer partner BS. its all the same currency. then u can transfer crypto miles from multiple accounts and it transfers instantly. no more of this UR/MR/TYP crap.
Reading the Coinbase article, there’s an important point for the average DoC reader:
…the merchant will be able to control what offers they are making, as well as customize its Membership Rewards structure. Further, the merchants will be able to “assign bonuses to items at product or [stock keeping unit] level.”
Read that as “MSIng GCs will be void once Visa/MC adopt this technology in the relatively near future”.
Great point. Let’s hope it takes em a while!
That requires the merchant passing on item level detail to Visa/Mastercard/American Express. Most won’t willingly do this unless they get a massive rate discount as the data aggregation is worth a lot of money, especially to a competitor.
If I’m correct, William, there is no reason to do that with this tech. The *merchant* assigns the bonus level (or removes it) at the product/SKU level. There’s no passing of information required; if the store wants to eliminate GC bonus, or Visa asks them to, they just handle it within house.
Surely amex is still seeing that the purchase didn’t qualify for the bonus though and then they know what type of purchase it is?
Thank you for sharing. With all these high interest savings accounts closing, looks like it’s about time to buy bitcoin! My USBank atms around town are off-and-on and they even refuse to count your Fed-issued coins! I move my bitcoin in minutes and paid 20 cents last time to do it a few days ago. What’s a good tag line for the bank tombstones?
Just remember: the banks have far more money than you and every crypto proselytizer will ever have. They will simply apply the best parts of bitcoin and other crypto currencies to their business processes and move on.
Also, if *now* is your time to buy into bitcoin, you’re about 5 years too late.
about 60% of ath, its a decent time to buy still.
I should have clarified my point. Mainly, if you’re putting money into bitcoins to replace “high interest’ (lol) savings accounts in the USA, you’re doing it wrong from multiple angles. First, aside from parking 5-figure amounts in small banks to maybe find a return of 2%+ (or splitting deposits into <$5K chunks to many small banks and tracking them all to get 5% sometimes) there hasn't been much in the way of "high interest" savings in the US for well over a decade. Second, if you're using a volatile crypto-currency to replace your extremely safe but low yielding savings accounts, you're the sucker at the table; that's a fundamental imbalance of your overall portfolio. Third, if you were attempting to find out-sized reward for that investment to justify pulling your Federally-insured $ from a simple savings account, you should have done that when BCs were $5 each, not $8-$20K.
Yeah… just make sure you know when to sell out. All this growth will do you no good if you wait until the news hits that it’s time to get out. And individual investors like us are always last in line to the table.
Bitcoin has nothing to do with it. Banks have already started implementing blockchain technology and will continue to do so.
I’m waiting until McDonald’s starts offering blockchain ordering.