Citi Trailing New Loyalty Reward-Centred Card
- Citi proposes the Citi ThankYou Preferred 2G Card (2G standing for “Second Generation”) with “Request Rewards” option displaying two buttons. The mag-stripe card makes it possible to segregate traditional payments from payments based on the loyalty points gathered through Citi’s customer reward programme. These collected points can be spent in physical stores without requiring any specific partnerships: they become universal means of payment and they do not expire.
- The card is only activated once one of the two buttons selected: a blue light indicates that a traditional transaction (“Regular Credit”) is about to take place, the red LED identifies the other, rewards-related, payments (“Request Rewards”). The customer earns 10 dollars every 1,000 points –at a more interesting rate than the one proposed through Citi’s online programme ThankYou.com (2,500 for 15 dollars).
- Test phases have been launched in October 2011 (and even earlier with the help of some employees from the bank –May 2011). The medium has been sent to a limited number of Citi ThankYou and Dividend customers. Citi’s development strategy may initially have counted on deployments for end 2011. Yet, pilot tests are still being conducted and, for now, customers cannot apply for this card themselves.
- As the card costs more to manufacture, this initiative may illustrate Citi’s will to bet on innovative solutions. Dynamics’s Electronic Stripe technology has been awarded at Finovate 2011. It obviously has been selected by Citi for its groundbreaking programming features and compatibility with almost all the mag-stripe card readers available on the market.
- We should also note that Dynamics’s (also awarded) Chip and Choice technology, for its part, makes it possible to part several actions on a single smart card.