Affinity Based Loyalty in Payments By Sami Sulieman (@SamiSulieman) A common way of increasing revenue is to attract new customers, regardless of the cost, the strategy is to entice new customers with generous introductory offers. These new customers do not have a history with the company, and they are therefore a difficult target audience, due to the lack of relevant data. It is a well-established fact that the cost of acquisition for new customers is higher than the cost to maintain existing ones. There is thus an opportunity for businesses to re-think how they increase revenue, and to shift their focus away from acquiring new customers, to instead look at maximising what is possible to get from the existing customer-base. It is common for brands to tackle this by using various loyalty programs, which often serve as a points-based system. These are difficult to utilise and offer a low return in tangible value compared to actual spend in the store. This area is lacking a 360-degree mindset which could involve new technology, innovative uses of payment instruments, and customer experience. From our point of view, there must be a way to engage with existing customers – to have them evolve from just regular customers into true brand ambassadors – with the help of modern technology and the hub-based models that many FinTech’s are using. One solution is to target brands with a large customer base that already have some level of affinity. You can then use a mobile wallet and a physical prepaid card as the foundation for a data-based loyalty platform that goes beyond offers and discounts to instead utilise behavioural and transactional data in order to create a personalised experience. This personalisation of the customer experience, aided by relevant data points in the mobile wallet, results in customers consuming more, staying longer and establishing an emotional loyalty to the brand.