Glance Technologies set to disrupt loyalty program universe with blockchain-based rewards
The team at Vancouverbased Glance Technologies is no fan of friction — so much so that they invented the Glance Pay App, a mobile payment system, to streamline restaurant bill payments. Now the company is turning its eye to revolutionizing loyalty rewards programs by proposing a decentralized loyalty marketplace using its own blockchainbased currency, Glance Coin.
Glance understands that consumers love signing up for loyalty programs. However, they’re not always using the loyalty rewards they earn. A 2017 report by global customer engagement agency Bond Brand Loyalty notes that Canadians hold an estimated $16 billion in unredeemed loyalty points, while only 16 per cent of Canadians surveyed were satisfied with the level of effort needed to earn a reward or benefit.
“Electronic payment systems are all tied into loyalty reward incentive programs that are designed to motivate customers to keep on coming back,” says Desmond Griffin, chief executive officer at Glance. “But consumers are finding that loyalty programs aren’t providing them with the incentives they want, or making it easy to spend their rewards in a way that’s meaningful to them. We believe that we can take the friction out of the loyalty program space by developing a blockchain platform for both rewards and payments.”
Glance Coin will be based on the Ethereum-based crypto-token. Once earned, program members will carry their tokens in secure digital wallets.
Glance notes that the new development is fundamentally relevant to its core business and technology offering, not an unrelated crypto add-on.
“We’re not an iced tea company or a mining company that’s changing our name,” says Jonathan Hoyles, chief commercial officer and general counsel with Glance. “We are building a technology that solves real issues for consumers and merchants. Blockchain technology is integral to our plans for a decentralized loyalty program. By building the program on blockchain we’re creating a rewards system that offers value independent of the program. Glance intends to use blockchain-based ‘smart contracts’ that are automated and thus don’t allow a company to devalue or cancel the points they’ve issued. That provides consumers with the confidence that’s missing from many loyalty programs.”
Use of blockchain technology means that users’ personal information does not need to be provided to merchants, so consumers can make transfers and purchases with confidence while enjoying rewards. Glance’s proprietary anti-fraud technology will add an extra layer of security to those transactions.
“As with traditional loyalty programs, merchants who use Glance Coin will be able to incentivize their customers to engage in the type of consumer behaviour they want to encourage, including physically returning to their location,” says Griffin. “However, our innovations utilizing smart contracts will allow users to accumulate Glance Coin rewards for as long as they choose and to spend them in ways that were never possible before.”
Program members, for example, could collect enough Glance Coins to pay for a dream vacation. They could collect tokens at one merchant and spend them at another. The cryptocurrency could also be gifted to others, or taken out of the system and exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or traditional currencies.
“Cryptocurrencies are already being employed primarily on mobile payment platforms,” says Griffin. “Glance Coin dovetails with Glance Pay to take advantage of that revolutionary shift. Our goal as a platform is to make that transition as seamless and easy as possible.”
As a decentralized blockchain technology, Glance Coin will also eliminate third-party transaction fees that add to the costs of loyalty rewards programs and cannibalize the value of rewards available to members.
While millennials have been the earliest adopters of both Glance Pay and cryptocurrencies, Griffin notes that older demographics are eager adopters of both loyalty reward programs and new technologies.
Glance’s assertive roll-out plans for Glance Coin include initially scaling up the system and then exposing the platform to third-party developers to allow them to integrate both Glance Payments and Glance Coin into their applications as part of a growing Glance Coin universe.
Angela Griffin, chief technology officer at Glance, is the architect of the cryptocurrency reward program. Her current responsibility is to ensure that the technology is tested and true prior to launch.
“We’re at the intersection of mobile payments, mobile marketing, consumer loyalty and crypto assets,” she says. “Each of these industry verticals are at a different stage of growth and evolution. They’re also facing various growing pains. Glance Technologies is bringing them all together and addressing the friction that has previously prevented them from being harnessed in unison.”
To download the new Glance Coin whitepaper, visit: https://glance.tech/wpcontent/uploads/2018/06/ GlanceCoin_Whitepaper.pdf