To begin, Card-Linked Offers (or CLOs) are digital rewards users can earn by linking their credit card or debit card(s) to an app, website, or loyalty program. When users shop at specific merchants, they have the opportunity to earn rewards, usually through either points or cash back.

A Card-linked Offer platform or program, then, is the mode through which those offers are run. A merchant or company wishing to run a CLO can connect with a card-linked offer platform or program in order to run their own offers.

What are the main providers or platforms for Card-Linked Offers?

Traditionally, most Card-Linked Offers were run through specific financial institutions – like Bank of America’s BankAmeriDeals or Chase’s Chase Offers. The major payment networks like American Express, Visa, and Mastercard also run plenty of CLOs. Additionally, many airlines also have developed CLOs so that users can earn rewards on travel.

Financial institutions, payment networks, and airlines aren’t the only way to get in on e-commerce CLOs, however. Today there are also apps built specifically for rewards that can essentially give users the same benefits as what they get through financial institutions or payment networks. Rakuten, Dosh, Figg, and Mogl are some, to name a few.

Whichever provider, platform, or route users choose to earn rewards, research shows that Card-Linked Offers build loyalty between shoppers and participating merchants or retailers.

How much does a Card-Linked Offer program cost?

Creating a Card-Linked Offer used to be very expensive. If you were a company wanting to implement CLOs for your customers, you would first pay an implementation fee of several thousand dollars to a CLO provider or platform (i.e. a financial institution or payment network) . After that, you would pay additional fees to the platform every single time an offer was redeemed, at the price of approximately $1.50 per redemption. To calculate that out, if your company had 150 people redeem an offer in one day, that would cost your company approximately $225, paid to the CLO platform or program.

The good news is that the process described above is no longer the only route to start implementing and benefitting from CLOs. For example, if you use Pentadata’s financial APIs to start Card-Linked Offers instead, there is no implementation fee at all. And instead of paying for each individual redeemed offer, you pay a monthly fee for each connected account. That fee is only $0.50 per month per account. So if you had 150 connected accounts to your CLO, it would only cost you $75 per month total – and that cost won’t increase even if those accounts are redeeming more offers.

If you’re interested in running a card-linked offer with open banking, get in touch with us! We’d love to talk more.

In this post and the next several blog posts, we’re covering common questions developers and entrepreneurs have about rewards programs, card-linked offers, and the technology to start one. Stay tuned for more Q&A coming soon!