Australian shoppers can now benefit from linking their payment card and loyalty program, ensuring they receive loyalty benefits at the point of sale, even without their loyalty card on hand.

With the launch of OneTap Loyalty technology, customers can enable the loyalty program to recognise their payment card, no matter where or when they shop.

According to Carly Neubauer, co-founder and director of Elevate Loyalty, the company responsible for developing and rolling out the technology, the new platform is set to revolutionise loyalty programs.

“OneTap Loyalty registers a payment card with the loyalty program so the customer can simply tap and pay when shopping in store or online. The payment card will detect that the shopper is part of the store’s loyalty program and award the points,” she said.

“The shopper receives an immediate ‘surprise and delight’ message to their phone confirming they’ve received rewards points to their account. The service is completely free for shoppers and easily integrated with existing loyalty programs.”

Neubauer states that less than half of retail transactions are attributed to customers’ loyalty accounts because shoppers don’t have their card on them or are in too much of a hurry at the checkout. During seasonal periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this figure drops to as low as 20%.

“OneTap Loyalty removes the hurdles faced by shoppers when using loyalty programs and transforms customer engagement. The technology works on both new and existing member or loyalty programs and is suitable for all types of program constructs such as points, benefits, rewards or subscriptions.

“For retailers, it means checkout times are reduced because it saves sales assistants asking customers about rewards cards. Another important benefit of OneTap Loyalty is that the technology does not store any consumer data including payment cards. This information is retained within the loyalty program. The capability to identify the payment card at checkout is created within the loyalty program through a permission-based action approved by the member. OneTap Loyalty provides the technical capability to enable this.”