Sales, Social and Tech

Start-ups looking to put the loyalty cards into the mobile phone are sprouting out these days and many more are being inspired to look at creating one on their own. These new start-ups are putting new features to the digital loyalty card to differentiate themselves, but is there a really a business model for loyalty? I am highlighting this issue, not because of the biasses of where I am working now, but rather from the experience of the first version that has taught us valuable lessons in the business of loyalty. The learnings from the experience may be wrong and I will welcome these start-ups to show me otherwise. Every digital loyalty card startup will talk about the fat wallet syndrome and how consumer will appreciate the fact that the digital loyalty card will remove this. There is some truth in this as much some wallets and purses are filled with loyalty cards, or the overfill of loyalty cards that are left in the car or in the house, and a thinner wallet would be much app...

The work at Taggo requires me to go around talking to retailers. The common question I get from retailers is that should they provide instant discounts or offer loyalty rewards to their customers? A quick survey on Facebook showed that 17 of my friends prefer instant rewards opposed to two who said they would like the retailer to reward them on their fifth visit. You can take the survey at   https://www.facebook.com/?sk=question&id=10150705459662474&post_id=10150708728782474 The cost of providing the loyalty reward is no different from offering an instant discount.  Let's take a SGD5 mug of coffee for example. Say you return to the coffee shop after your 5th time to collect the free mug of coffee, you would have spend SGD25 at the coffee shop. So the free sixth cup of SGD5 coffee would out to a 20% discount from the retailer.  That would be the same if the coffee shop gave 20% upfront.  Sub-consciously, most consumer will do the maths an...

One would think that if all retailers had credit card facilities to allow customers pay by credit card, the bank issuing the credit card would benefit from the more of their customers using it. However, a discussion with my local optician showed that it isn't that easy for SMB retailers to get such facilities on their premises. The optician told me that he had to face a barrage of questions from the bank's representative. One include asking him how much his revenue was. This was when the optician just started his business. Next came the cost. The bank representative told the optician that he had to pay a fee of SGD1,800 upfront every three years. In addition, he had to pay a monthly subscription fee. This was definitely not attractive for optician as this cost meant that he had to increase his prices by 20%. As such, he chose not to use the bank's credit card facilities. Here is a market ready for disruption..

Singapore's reputation for being the best in the financial sector has come under fire again with reports that unauthorised withdrawals were made from DBS and POSB account holders. This comes in the heels of the story that eNets, an online payment provider, went offline for 11 hours because its domain was not renewed in time. A Facebook user has scanned her POSB bank book to show show the unauthorised withdrawal of funds. Image from Facebook Wrote the Facebook User,  POSB Withdrawal Fraud! Just came back from the bank to realise that my account has been hacked into. There has been 4 transactions made from overseas ATM machines with withdrawals up to $2000 over a 2 day period!! & my ATM card is here with me in my wallet! The POSb branch Manager has confirmed that there has been more then one of such cases reported since yesterday! & I have no internet banking nor paypal accounts! Am pending the investigations now.. Please check your accounts or update you...

I raised a Facebook question yesterday asking my friends and the entire Facebook universe if they would like link their credit cards to their NFC phone and make payments with that NFC phone. The link to the Facebook Question can be found at http://on.fb.me/frpCLA . 38% or 23 out of 59 voted “no” and would rather use their plastic credit cards to make payment. 29% voted “yes” as they would like mobile phone to do everything. 25% said they would link their credit cards to their NFC phone and pay with that phone, but still had security concerns. The remaining 4 said a flat no to doing it as they have security concerns. Interestingly, one said he has not heard of NFC phones. Another friend who participated in the recent NFC phone trial with Starhub and ezlink said he received a funny look from MacDonald service staff when he paid with his NFC phone. However, he did highlight that there were no updates after the trial from both Starhub and ezlink. As can be seen, that adoption to li...