New loyalty programme Cashpoints arrives to fill the FlyBuys gap

A new customer loyalty programme, Cashpoints is offering a real-time, collect and-spend initiative for national retailers.

It is led by customer loyalty expert Ian Sutcliffe, co-founder of AA Smartfuel, and is supported by an experienced team who worked on the highly-engaged programme that had more than three million members when it ceased in January.

The announcement of Cashpoints comes in the same month as FlyBuys stops offering rewards to its customers.

Filling that gap, Cashpoints removes the pain points for retailers and delivers choice and immediacy for consumers, Sutcliffe says.

“Cashpoints is a cross between retailers having their own programme and being part of a coalition programme, and it allows consumers to collect and spend their Cashpoints where they were earned or across the retailer village. It’s loyalty in an instant – instant for retailers and instant for consumers.”

Sutcliffe has held senior leadership marketing roles at Westpac and McDonald’s. With more than a decade running and fine-tuning AA Smartfuel, he and the team have learned where opportunities exist, and identified the sweet spot for both retailers and consumers.

In market early next year, Cashpoints will be a retail coalition community of both in-store and online partners, across multiple categories ranging from frequent purchases through to big ticket items.

Dubbed “loyalty in a box”, Sutcliffe says Cashpoints offers retail partners all the tools they need to run their own loyalty programme, “but without having to worry about building a system, funding all the assets and the people that are required to run it”.

“We take care of it all – cards, point of sale assets, an advanced real-time data platform, cyber security, database functionality and consumer insights. We know what works and have made implementing a loyalty solution easy for retailers.

“We’ve made it affordable – it’s a monthly license fee with unlimited transactions and the retailer pays for the rewards only after they’ve been issued to the customer, with no up-front commitment to issue a minimum amount of rewards.

“It’s flexible, retailers can choose how they reward their customers based on their business needs.  Whichever way a business wants to append a Cashpoint, they can do it – by behaviour, time of day, day of the week, by product and by spend threshold. It is totally flexible and it’s controlled by the retailer.”

With the expertise of data and insights specialists who have worked with a range of leading New Zealand brands including Air New Zealand and Spark, Cashpoints provides real-time reporting in interactive dashboard form – helping retailers better understand their customers.

“That deeper understanding of their customers is an area we believe adds immense value for partners. We will help them understand their customers in their environment, their customers in other environments, and potential new customers too. We want to really empower retailers through better customer insights.”

Sutcliffe pointed to this month’s first-ever independent study of retail loyalty in New Zealand – Quantum Jump/Yabble 2024 Loyalty State of the Nation Survey – that showed customers’ prefer coalition loyalty programmes.

“The survey showed that 80 percent of respondents preferred a loyalty programme that involved multiple brands, rather than a single company programme. That’s exactly what Cashpoints offers.”

He believes Cashpoints will become “front of wallet” for consumers, as any balance can be immediately redeemed in the form of cash discounts.

“Consumers want a real time rewards programme that has choice of reward, relevancy of reward, and is super easy to understand.”

Sutcliffe plans to launch with a core group of national retailers, adding: “Response to Cashpoints has been really positive, as businesses look to maintain and grow their customer bases, offer a point of difference and gain better understanding of their customers.”

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