Credit and debit card loyalty programs have been around for ages in one form or another, but app developer Yub is pushing for a shifting of gears. By blurring the line between offline and online, Yub aims to provide a new way for merchants and affiliates to put rewards in the hands of increasingly mobile consumers.
Consumers can leverage Yub’s mobile app to generate rewards that can be instantly be redeemed via credit or debit card.
In an interview with PYMNTS.com, Yub co-founder Alex Rampell explained that one of the major challenges facing digital loyalty platforms is consumer trust. Many consumers are apprehensive about entering their sensitive information into a portal like a mobile phone that might be compromised later. As such, he believes the physical card could be the right form factor to encourage such activity.
“On a consumer side we spend a lot of time on the trust issue, making sure that the whole experience is foolproof and very easy to use. And we can give as much information as possible to consumers in terms of how their information is being used, how things work behind the scenes,” he said (Jump to: 4:10).
Yub’s offline focus begs the question of how the platform can compete in a landscape that is migrating toward mobile payments. When asked if Yub plans to shift gears as mobile payments adoption grows, Rampell countered by saying that mobile payments dovetail with what the company is trying to accomplish (Jump To: 6:50).
“From our perspective, right now, we’re seeing mobile [payments] as a very, very large source of the end-offers that are completed,” he said before adding that rather than “bucking the trend,” mobile payments fit nicely into Yub’s business model.
Looking ahead to 2014, Rampell sees merchants relying on an increasingly diverse set of tools and methods to reach out to consumers. Affiliate networks like Yub will play a powerful role in this process, Rampell predicts (Jump to 14:20).
To hear more about how Yub plans to compete in an increasingly crowded loyalty space, and Rampell’s predictions for 2014, listen to our full podcast below.
Part One
Part Two
*If you have trouble with the Part One audio player, click here.
*If you have trouble with the Part Two audio player, click here.
Alex Rampell, co-founder, CEO, Yub
Alex Rampell was formerly the co-founder and CEO of TrialPay, where he was responsible for general management and building corporate infrastructure. Prior to TrialPay, Alex co-founded FraudEliminator, the first consumer anti-phishing company, which merged into SiteAdvisor and was acquired by McAfee in April 2006.
Alex began his career writing and selling consumer software on bulletin board systems and the nascent Internet. His first successful company, started at age 11, gained hundreds of thousands of paying consumers worldwide and had products featured in Forbes, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, “Today,” CNBC and BusinessWeek. Alex serves on the board of directors for Backstage Games and friend.ly, and is an investor in over 15 venture backed companies, including Hunch, Bloomreach, BillShrink, Lefora, World Golf Tour, and Datalot. He holds an AB in Applied Math and Computer Science, cum laude, from Harvard University.
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