If ever there was a time for Retail & Hospitality to take advantage of technologies to create the necessary momentum to win back departed Footfall it is now.

Over the past couple of weeks I have written about the importance of data and the latent insight it can contain if and when surfaced properly to create actionable business outcome value.  I've also touched upon the need for the re-emerging sector to take a deep, strategic look at how it deals with Loyalty and the resultant Customer Experience (CX) it can generate.  But they're not separate streams of focus, instead they are all conjoined and should form part of an holistic strategy aimed at first truly understanding possibly radically changed customer behaviour and second, creating a business platform for sustained growth, increased sales, improved margin and enhanced profitability.

One of the joys of writing my blogs is the opportunity to 'meet' (virtually for now) new contacts, often with new, innovative technologies and ideas.  Following the publication of one such article I was contacted by Sina Saidinayer of Fidel API and we spent what was, for me, a very enlightening, enjoyable half an hour discussing re-imagined Retail Loyalty and in particular, Fidel API's Card-Linked real-time payment data platform.  It was one of those conversations where two previously unconnected parties shared uncannily common ground, outlook and means of value articulation.  And at this moment in Retail's history, the conceptual synthesis of melding transparent payment information with the opportunity for greatly enhanced analytical insight to power a more mature Loyalty offering must be of critical importance.

For me, the beauty of such a solution is that it has the potential to address so many Loyalty/Insight challenges all at once.  From what might seem to appear to be mundane, prosaic issues of forcing customers to have to use separate physical payment and Loyalty cards through to the vitally important challenges of guaranteeing Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards together with customer GDPR privacy, Card-Linking offers the prospect of delivering upon multiple streams of technical challenge and business value concurrently.  I am particularly excited about the potential to at last bridge the divide which exists between Online and Offline sales fulfilled to the same customer, the so-called O2O conundrum - and with it, the invaluable opportunity for Retailers and Hospitality providers to analyse same-customer behaviour, trends and patterns pan-channel.  The cost of running Loyalty programmes and ensuring that the rewards they offer customers are both affordable and still meaningful becomes a far more strategic imperative, aimed at luring customers back post-Covid and building a CX which keeps them returning.  With contactless payment methods now being preferred and indeed, in some cases the only method of transaction purchase offered, the opportunity for Card-Linked payment/Loyalty data analysis has never been easier or more powerful.  The recently increased contactless payment level (up from £30 to £45 in the UK) only further increases the chances of even higher valuable data volumes.  Even before the pandemic, c.80% of retail sales were being made via card payments - and that already high figure is only going one way.

I have no connection, paid or otherwise, with Fidel API, but I do know A Good Idea when I see one.  The generic concept of Card-Linking to enhance Retail/Hospitality Loyalty programmes isn't brand-spanking new but at this time of re-imagining processes and operations it seems like a real opportunity worth exploring to me.