Is miles to cash the future as mobile wallet allows users to spend anywhere?

October 12, 2012 By 2 Comments

Here’s an interesting development as a demonstration of the way airline frequent flier and loyalty schemes are headed.

PointsPay, part of the Loylogic stable, allows users to convert miles/points into money via an iPhone application.

Users can spend money in their chosen currency anywhere that accepts Visa or Mastercard in two ways – via a re-loadable plastic payment card or a virtual card.

The company is also looking at the potential for mobile payment.

So far, Etihad Airways has signed up to enable its Guest loyalty program members to use the PointsPay mobile wallet with about 1500 virtual and plastic cards issued and 50 million miles loaded in the first few days according to a statement.

An online survey carried out by Loylogic in March showed 67% would really like to be able to use points at the point-of-sale anywhere and 96% said they would be likely to try to earn more points as a result.

Flexibility and value were ranked of equal importance when it came to what’s most important when using points or miles in the survey of 1,500 loyalty scheme members.

In addition, research from Colloquy released last year showed a third of the $48 billion loyalty points earned annually are never redeemed.

Take up of this sort of initiative will sort the men from the boys in terms of those companies that really want to add value and those just playing lip service, or is that too cynical?

Here’s a clip:

Related posts:

  1. United Airlines, PayPal and ezRez to turn miles and points into digital currency
  2. Points International gives UK Airmiles ability to buy, gift miles
  3. United Airlines frequent flier miles can now buy music, movies
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Linda Fox About Linda Fox

Linda Fox is a reporter for Tnooz. For the past six years she has worked as a freelance journalist across a range of B2B titles including Travolution, ABTA Magazine, Travelmole and the Business Travel Magazine.

In this time she has also undertaken corporate projects for a number of high profile travel technology, travel management and research companies.

Prior to her freelance career she covered hotels and technology news for Travel Trade Gazette for seven years. Linda joined TTG from Caterer & Hotelkeeper where she worked on the features desk for more than five years.

Comments

  1. jonathan meiri says:
    October 14, 2012 at 5:28 am

    @Linda the numbers around miles and points are indeed staggering, and no doubt a large percentage goes unused.

    Unfortunately most domestic US airlines view their loyalty programs as cost centers, providing less and less value over time. They do so by manipulating the exchange rate of their currency (limiting the liquidity, expiration, black out dates, and increasing the cost of comparable). Furthermore, these airlines are suing companies like Award Wallet for simply showing users balances across multiple programs.

    So while I agree that miles and points could be as a form of payment, and a powerful catalyst for ancillary transactions, it will require the Airlines to start treating their Loyalty programs (and Frequent Flyers) as an asset rather than a liability.

    Reply
  2. Disarm Doors says:
    October 14, 2012 at 4:45 pm

    Lovely idea (and animation, BTW).

    I just wonder how most folk will feel when they see the value of their prized points/miles once they’re converted to real-world spendables.

    (Disa)Points Pay?

    Reply

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