Think about how many loyalty programmes you use in an ordinary week. You might scan a rewards card when buying groceries or earn benefits when filling up your car. Then you swipe your gym membership for a quick sweat session after work and on the way home, your online grocery order rewards you for shopping online.

For consumers, these interactions are simply part of everyday life. But the more loyalty programmes we use, the more there is to remember. Do I have to open the app? Where is that missing card that I could’ve sworn I put back in my wallet? And where are my rewards? It’s time loyalty catches up to the way we live the rest of our lives – connected, convenient and digital.

Your rewards should meet you where you are

We can already see this happening, with some of South Africa’s biggest brands seamlessly integrating their loyalty programmes into their customers’ lives. Checkers Xtra Savings follows customers from its stores into the Sixty60 environment, while eBucks allows shoppers to earn and spend rewards through online partners such as Takealot and Superbalist. Discovery Vitality takes the idea further by linking rewards to everyday behaviours and purchases through partners including Woolworths and Checkers, as well as Clicks and Dis-Chem. The models may differ, but the principle is much the same: your rewards should meet you where you are.

As consumers join more programmes, aggregation will inevitably become more important. But bringing everything into one place is only the first step. The bigger opportunity is connectivity: making it easier for consumers not only to access their cards, but to engage with the value, benefits and experiences associated with them.

Digital wallets are an important step in that direction. At (my)cards, we started by bringing the cards people already use onto their phones, solving the practical problem of keeping track of a wallet full of plastic and making those cards easier to access when you reach the till.

But storing a card digitally and creating a connected loyalty experience are two different things. The next step is making sure consumers can access their rewards when they need them. Say you’re filling up your car and you know you have a benefit locked away somewhere. With a connected experience, that reward will pop up when you need it, instead of you having to remember it and hunt for it.

This is where artificial intelligence and real-time technology can make loyalty much smarter. Instead of expecting you to remember every reward you have available, technology can help surface relevant value at the moment it matters. But the goal shouldn’t be more offers or notifications – it should be better relevance. And that requires permission and trust, with consumers remaining in control while the complexity happens behind the scenes. Less effort, more reward.

A smarter way to reward loyalty

Over the next three to five years, the best loyalty programmes will be the ones that make themselves useful in the moment. Each brand can still have its own programme and its own rewards, but the experience around them needs to become easier. The future isn’t necessarily one universal loyalty programme. Individual programmes will still need their own identities and compelling value propositions. The opportunity is to create a more connected layer that makes it simpler for consumers to interact with the programmes they choose to use. For brands, that means thinking beyond the sign-up and focusing on what happens afterwards. If someone has earned a reward, how easily can they use it?

At (my)cards, our starting point is solving a very practical consumer problem: bringing the cards people already use into one accessible digital wallet. But digitising the wallet is the starting point, rather than the end point. The bigger opportunity is what can happen around that wallet as technology, brands and services become more connected.

The physical wallet became digital. The next opportunity is to make the experience around it connected.

//By Byron Rode, founder and CEO of (my)cards, part of Glynt