How Glance Coin’s blockchain-based loyalty rewards program plans to take on the world
Vancouver-based Glance Technologies has taken the pain and friction out of payments through its Glance Pay App, a mobile payment system that allows customers to settle their bills using a smartphone. Its next innovation is Glance Coin, a blockchain-based currency that’s central to the company’s plans to take a revolutionary new loyalty rewards program worldwide.
“Cryptocurrency remains an enigma for many smartphone users and small- to medium-sized businesses,” says Jonathan Hoyles, chief commercial officer and general counsel with Glance. “We see a global opportunity to build an easily accessible platform where consumers can conveniently accumulate crypto loyalty rewards. We see real value for merchants who will be able to use our platform to incentivize their customers through the use of blockchain-based ‘smart contracts’.”
A 2018 report by global customer-engagement agency Bond Brand Loyalty notes that the loyalty landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, making it ripe for disruption by “escalating customer expectations, perpetual new players [and] evolving technologies.” It notes that loyalty program membership has risen by 68 per cent in North America, South America and Europe in the past five years. More than 91 per cent of members surveyed said they want to connect to their loyalty program through new technology.
The Glance Coin loyalty rewards infrastructure will offer four characteristics that provide it with the potential to go global: it will be portable, secure, exchangeable and scalable.
Unlike traditional rewards program earnings, Glance Coin will be a cryptocurrency that can be exchanged for rewards offered by other member merchants, gifted to others, exchanged for other crypto currencies or converted into cash. It removes the artificial limits placed by traditional rewards programs on the type of rewards a member can earn.
“We’ve found that people like to save up their points and exchange them for large rewards,” says Hoyles. “Using Glance Coin, a member could earn loyalty rewards from multiple merchants and save them for an international vacation.”
Arriving in that country, members could exchange additional Glance Coins for restaurant meals or convert some of the coins into local currency. It would be completely flexible.
“If you believe in the potential of cryptocurrencies, it’s a natural extension to understand that a blockchain-based reward system is needed,” says Desmond Griffin, chief executive officer at Glance. “The current loyalty reward market is fragmented, inefficient and static. Glance Coin will cut out the middleman and it can be used independent of physical objects such as paper and plastic. Once a loyalty program member earns reward tokens, they can carry them with them anywhere in digital wallets.”
Glance Technologies has developed an added layer of proprietary anti-fraud technology that will protect its users anywhere in the world. “We’ve had great success with our anti-fraud technology,” says Griffin. “Security and fraud prevention are the key areas in my mind to global adoption of a digital payment and loyalty program.”
Glance’s complementary application, Glance PayMe™, will allow businesses anywhere to easily adopt Glance Pay and Glance Coin without the use of additional devices or technology.
“To date, we’ve been focused on growing communities of engaged merchants and users of the Glance Pay App in Vancouver, Toronto and southern California,” says Griffin. “We see the next stage of our growth arriving with the upcoming launch of Glance PayMe™. This will provide us with the platform to spread to more merchants, more quickly. We believe a downloadable merchant app combined with access to cryptocurrency loyalty rewards will be of great value to small- to medium-sized businesses.”
The app will allow merchants to start accepting Glance payments and rewards within minutes. Glance believes this should help enable viral adoption of its technology among merchants and position Glance Pay to provide payment services similar to those exploding in China.
“There’s been a lot of talk about integrating blockchain and cryptocurrencies into everyday transactions to improve people’s lives,” says Angela Griffin, chief technology officer at Glance. “But there’s been very little application of that idea. With Glance Coin, we’re actually doing it and that places us on the forefront of this technology.”
Desmond Griffin has had significant success in taking another mobile system global as co-founder of PayByPhone, a parking mobile app and payment solution. The payment system was launched in Vancouver and soon migrated to more than 100 cities around the world, including major U.S. and European centres. It was sold to Volkswagen Financial Services in 2016.