Sakal Times

Encashing Loyalty Points

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With the festive season at its peak, shopping is always on the agenda and loyalty points can help lighten the burden on your pocket.

It is that time of the year when everyone indulges in some kind of retail therapy courtesy the slew of festivals that are around the corner. Naturally it is also the time when you feel the burden if depleting finances too. However you can make the most of the festivities by encashing your reward points. We tell you how.

Value Adds

Rewards points have a lot to offer, and if done right, you could make the most of the payment that you would have done anyway. The more you put a single payment option to use – even for routine expenses like utility bills, groceries and the like, the easier it gets to rack in rewards. “Generally, credit instruments offer higher reward points compared to debit. Take for example the case of ePayLater, not only do you get the option to pay later for your purchase, but also the facility to avail rewards on the same. These points can be redeemed for further transactions and well as repayments!” – Uday Somayajula, co-founder, ePayLater. This is also the time when traders offer discounts, cashbacks and reward points both offline and online to attract maximum number of customers who are looking for attractive deals for festive shopping.

Aggregation Matters

If you simply look at all the places you shop, you will realise that you have several loyalty or reward points. However most of it is scattered and if you could aggregate all of it on one platform the kind of potential savings you could have is immense. Twid a millennials payment app that aggregates and joins multiple loyalty/ reward points is one such platform that helps you to use these points to pay at offline and online stores. Amit Koshal, Founder & CEO, Twid avers, “over INR 16000 Crores worth of points were lying unseen by the consumers in India today. These rewards get accumulated in the user’s account but are usually forgotten or not noticed by them and there is hardly any meaningful option to spend them on.” Inspired by this realization, founders of Twid Amit Koshal, Rishi Batra and Amit Sharma, established a mobile-first global platform. This platform helps consumers utilize accumulated reward points by making payments at leading online and offline retail avenues by aggregating points earned from various sources. The app that is currently available on Google Play has well integrated partnerships with banks, retailers, dining, travel, online platforms and much more. It allows the users to keep track of all their loyalty memberships, total accumulated points, their worth, expiry date, transaction history, etc.

Tech Talk

Twid has technological integrations with banks and brands that allow a user’s current reward balance to be retrieved in real time. “We use mobile number, first and last name of a user to fetch. These are all auto fetched, so you don’t have to add one by one. However in corner cases where the mobile numbers are outdated, user can manually select the bank or a brand and enter card or mobile number, complete OTP authentication is fetch,” says Koshal. This platform combines multiple loyalty programs from banks, brands, airlines that we all are part of but do not track. “We bring all under TWID, combine them as per their current conversion ratio set by the bank or brand so that it becomes big and then it can be used anywhere and everywhere. So a shopping brand reward can be used to pay your coffee or dining bill,” explains Koshal. So it is time for you to look into your wallet and pull up all the cards that have potential savings in place and what better time than now. Remember loyalty points often come with an expiry date. So make your money work or you. And add a smile to your festivities.

This story first appeared in Sakal Times dated Oct 28,2019 here:

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