Blockchain is the magic word ❤️

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Blockchain is the magic word ❤️
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<h1><strong>Companies Applying Blockchain For Better Loyalty Programs</strong></h1>
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<p><img src="https://cointelegraph.com/images/725_aHR0cHM6Ly9jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS9zdG9yYWdlL3VwbG9hZHMvdmlldy8xOTFmMmViZTAwZTVjNDJkZmIwNWRmM2E1OGJkOTRlYS5qcGc=.jpg" width="725" height="483"/></p>
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<p>&nbsp;Customer &nbsp;loyalty and engagement are among the most important metrics for &nbsp;measuring modern retail company’s success. To woo potential customers &nbsp;and reward the long-standing ones for their patronage, almost every &nbsp;successful business nowadays employs loyalty programs of some sort. Statistically, you, dear reader, most probably have participated in &nbsp;loyalty programs on several occasions and used coupons, plastic cards &nbsp;and digital notes which had some value within the network of the company &nbsp;that decided to reward its customers. And from personal experience, you can probably attest that traditional loyalty programs suffer from an entire host of maladies. To name a few, there is an obvious lack of a unified system which &nbsp;leads to low liquidity of loyalty points. Rewards are only redeemable at &nbsp;certain establishments and often not easily so. And of course, &nbsp;digitization is a must in the modern world. While some loyalty rewards are even now trackable or redeemable &nbsp;online, still they are not digital assets in and of themselves. And of &nbsp;course, there is always the necessity to use the intermediaries, like &nbsp;banks, which by itself increases the costs and introduces additional &nbsp;security risks.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Blockchain is the magic word</h2>
<p>Those are all very familiar issues to anyone who’s been following the <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-use-cases-from-image-mining-virtual-economy-to-crowdfunding">advance of Blockchain</a> &nbsp;technology in the real sector of the economy. Many industries have by &nbsp;now experienced the new disruptive paradigm of Blockchain and loyalty &nbsp;programs could not remain an exception for long. There are industries that can use Blockchain and there are industries &nbsp;that absolutely need it. Loyalty programs fall somewhere in between. &nbsp;The benefits are clear and real. Blockchain gives program providers &nbsp;simple and efficient tools which facilitate unmediated interaction &nbsp;between customers, managers and individual vendors. We all know by now that <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/tags/blockchain">Blockchain</a> &nbsp;is tamper-proof and pretty secure. But perhaps the most compelling &nbsp;benefit of Blockchain is cost-efficiency. Loyalty programs cost a &nbsp;fortune to develop and maintain while Blockchain solution can do the job &nbsp;better at a fraction of the cost. The last thing that has to be mentioned is the <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/tokenization-the-force-behind-blockchain-technology">tokenization</a> &nbsp;of loyalty points. Basically, being built on a cryptocurrency token, &nbsp;loyalty rewards can be freely transferred between people and even &nbsp;exchanged for fiat or other cryptocurrencies on crypto exchanges.&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Does it work?</h2>
<p>To this day a number of solutions facilitating an interlinked loyalty &nbsp;reward network have been created. Complete digitization provides a &nbsp;great opportunity for integration of many different loyalty programs on &nbsp;the same platform and that was the path chosen by most of the existing &nbsp;projects. Although the decentralized nature of Blockchain compels every project &nbsp;to create their own financial ecosystem, loyalty programs may become an &nbsp;exception. As they are not the main business activity of any company, &nbsp;joining a consortium effort does not involve serious risks that could &nbsp;mitigate the benefits. One of the most pressing challenges for a new Blockchain ecosystem is &nbsp;attracting enough participants to the budding market and a seamless &nbsp;loyalty reward space can be advantageous in accomplishing that task. A &nbsp;compelling argument not to be brushed aside easily. With just one wallet to accumulate all reward points in an integrated &nbsp;financial infrastructure, customers would not need to memorize each &nbsp;program’s rules and redemption options and vendors will not have to &nbsp;worry about the liquidity of their reward points. The first Blockchain-based customer reward program - Ribbit appeared back in 2014. Since then several other platforms like <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/dubai-and-norway-use-blockchain-to-redefine-tourism">Loyyal</a> and <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/works-like-magic-blockchain-to-help-streamline-loyalty-programs">Blockpoint</a> were launched. The projects are quite similar and simplistic in nature but &nbsp;invariably we see new iterations of this concept resurfacing now and &nbsp;again. So is it a trend exploitation or does the market actually need &nbsp;more of those?&nbsp;</p>
<h2>More of that, please</h2>
<p>One would think that joining an already existing large conglomerate &nbsp;would always be more beneficial for the participants in the end. Not &nbsp;exactly. Turns out there is still great value in decentralization when &nbsp;it comes to reward programs. To illustrate why under certain circumstances it is beneficial to &nbsp;create a completely separate customer loyalty system, one could take a &nbsp;look at the newest player on the market, <a href="https://biocoin.bio/en">BioCoin</a>. This Russian-based startup is not just a loyalty platform designed to &nbsp;incentivize consumers with Blockchain-based units of value. The &nbsp;platform’s broader goal is to facilitate the eco-friendly and healthy &nbsp;agricultural paradigm worldwide. In a nutshell, BioCoin is meant to support eco-farmers and &nbsp;organic food retailers and allow them to return value right into their &nbsp;local communities via a system of rewards and discounts. To achieve &nbsp;this, a separate economy is necessary because it will allow to preserve &nbsp;and multiply value within the community. To sum it up, there is a clear incentive to build loyalty platforms &nbsp;encompassing separate industries that rely on positive feedback from the &nbsp;community. Blockchain today is steadily permeating the loyalty programs &nbsp;sphere but its success depends ultimately on whether enough retailers &nbsp;and consumers around the world would dare to adopt this trending but &nbsp;still unpolished technology. &nbsp;</p>
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<blockquote>https://cointelegraph.com/news/companies-applying-blockchain-for-better-loyalty-programs</blockquote>
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