[2016-10-01] Incent to Reinvigorate the Loyalty-Rewards Industry with Blockchain

"The offering of companies reward schemes are little more than barter between companies and the customers, with consumers not receiving goods or services they actually want. Although the penetration of loyalty schemes and reward programs is very high, the actual use of these cards and schemes is around one-third of all users, meaning over 60 percent remain inactive.
Incent wants to take aim at this inefficiency and improve the value proposition offered to consumers with loyalty and reward schemes, proposing a shared-loyalty scheme where retailers can make use of a low-cost loyalty-as-a-service solution and still retain control over the deals to suit their audience and mark-ups.
The platform is comprised of three components; Incent, the tradeable token, a consumer-facing digital wallet, and a merchant dashboard embedding analytics and customer retention management tools.
The Incent concept is based around the idea of a loyalty margin, the difference between the benefits a consumer receives from a company and the cost to the company to run the loyalty scheme. The nature of the loyalty margin varies from industry to industry; for example, airlines and hotels have the largest loyalty margin as the marginal cost of offering an empty seat or room to a customer is relatively low. Compare this with consumer goods, and any offer means a loss in future sales revenue and some additional tax liabilities.
Thin loyalty margins are to blame for commerce’s inability to engage customers with reward schemes. By buffing up this margin, the Incent platform hopes to instill an ability to entice customers and drive repeat engagement for retailers.
Moreover, the reward currency with which a merchant uses to run their loyalty program at present possesses no value outside of their business, consequently representing a recordable tax liability, which is a major factor motivating expiry deadlines with such programs. Also, since the reward points have no value outside their business, consumers cannot exchange reward points for items they may actually want, with the company limited to offerings from their own range of products.
The Incent network has identified this as a major problem with the rewards and loyalty schemes. Such schemes are a not too dissimilar to a bartering process, where the fragmentation of rewards means there is no common currency for exchange, limiting the benefits enjoyed by the consumer and reducing the loyalty margin.
By introducing a token that can be exchanged for fiat currency, for goods and services across a range of retailers or share with their friends, merchants are relieved of any tax liabilities and consumers can be rewarded according to their preferences, driving large efficiency gains.

Rewards on the Blockchain
Incent is combining different technologies to achieve their goal to promote mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency through the exploitation of inefficiencies in the loyalty-reward industry. One of the key technologies behind Incent is the blockchain.
In selecting an infrastructure partner, WAVES was an obvious choice for Incent due to the proof of stake characteristic and the desirable functionality, including asset exchanges and fiat gateways. Since the WAVES blockchain makes it possible to create a digital asset that act as money and possesses a greater utility to consumers, a scalable rewards solution can be made available where the only cost to commercial participants is the monetary rewards they wish to offer as an incentive."

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