BPCE Helps SMEs Deal with Customer Loyalty Programs

Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne just launched a new turnkey customer loyalty solution for businesses. This service relies on automation for processing SMEs' customer payment information, again highlighting the relevance of Big Data and payment data analytics.

This new customer loyalty offer –called “FID PRO” (Banque Populaire) and “CE boost FID” (Caisse d’Épargne)– is meant for small companies, craftsmen, merchants, farmers and self-employed workers.

A specific software program is installed on subscribing businesses’ POS devices. When accepting payments from their customers, they can prompt them to key in their phone number at once. This will make it possible to set a link with their card number which then acts as a loyalty card, too. Their purchases will then be recorded.

Subscribing merchants will then have access to an online platform enabling them to manage these loyalty programs. This platform includes dashboards detailing their customers’ activities and buying habits. Using this information, businesses may feature customised loyalty offers and run targeted marketing campaigns.

Comments – Banks helping loyalty programs become gain momentum

BPCE bets a Card-Linked Offer model and tracking card transactions via businesses’ POS devices for the sake of ease of use. A software program is installed at POS level making this offer accessible to businesses.

This approach also allows this bank craft this service alone, while other banks, in Spain for instance, had to rely on partners to design similar offers for their merchant customers.

The idea of analysing in-store transactional data had, however, been considered by Santander (also in Spain). Their offer was then limited to analysing merchants’ activities,  allowing them to track related data via a dedicated mobile app. BPCE goes even further, following in the footsteps of another French company. In fact, Sodexo aimed for the same goals: helping loyalty programs become mainstream, back in March 2016.