Unveiled: New Merchant-Rewards Program Debuts

We first learned in January about a new merchants-funded rewards player readying to launch. That launch is now.

WRAP4, the name of the new service from Dave Bocks & Associates Marketing (DBAAM), is available for banks to white-label.

“We are officially ready to rock and roll,” Tom O’Rourke, director of loyalty and relationship marketing, tells Bank Innovation in an exclusive interview.

The new loyalty rewards program has the spirit of a daily deals company but relies on a bank’s business customers to offer exclusive details to its retail customers through a separate branded website. The “vast majority” of rewards will be for small businesses, something I have been personally pining for for months. Business types will range from entertainment to travel to retail and shopping, among other categories, and they are the ones determining the discounts and durations of their offers.

Though there will be multiple ways to redeem rewards depending on the merchant’s sophistication, consumers must swipe with a bank’s credit or debit card  to score the deals, he says. Regardless of how, redemption will be instant, and the rewards will be best in market, says O’Rourke.

The merchant-funded rewards space has been revitalized for many months now, with banks discovering they can do better than the Groupons of the world since they know customers’ transactions most intimately.Though innovation programs keep popping up within the financial services space, O’Rourke says his program boasts a couple of unique things, including that consumers must opt-in to receive the deals they wish, which means they “design their own program,” he says. “It’s all about the emotional response with a customer and getting them to opt in.”

Consumers, for example, choose what categories they wish to receive deals on and select when and how they receive offer notifications.

Also unique to WRAP4, according to O’Rourke, is that it will provide an “institution with geographic exclusivity.” In other words, the bank across the street can’t offer its customers the same service in order to ensure the existing bank user is offering the “best deals” within a region.

“It’s a first come, first serve basis,” he says.

DBAAM plans to target the top three or four banks in a given state.