We are delighted to let you know we have invested in Loyalty Republic, a bank and card agnostic loyalty program designed for both individual consumers and businesses.
Loyalty Republic (LR)’s program has been designed for the Australian consumer and business market, without the shortcomings of typical loyalty programs in the current Australian marketplace, with the promise to democratise loyalty solutions making them ‘fair and accessible for all’.
What does Loyalty Republic do?
Loyalty Republic works via a secure mobile app that allows consumers to earn rewards on debit card spending anywhere, and agnostically to any card issuer. Users earn a minimum of 1 point per $1 on every debit card purchase – and this applies everywhere you shop, not just with the partners in the app.
Users can also boost their points in various ways, by shopping for brands in their online store, taking a photo of the receipt, and choosing a ‘buy now, pay later’ option.
LR has some significant brands in its rapidly growing partner stable: Skechers, The Athlete’s Foot, Adairs, Windsor Smith, CAT Workwear, Review, Lululemon, BWS and more.
The app’s online mall (eMall) currently boasts over 900 brands offering 3,500+ products and 200+ types of gift cards, with which you can redeem points.
The points you earn are saved in an online wallet and may be redeemed as often as you like in real-time discounts or cashback. With their mantra of ‘Be a Rewards Boss’, LR encourages the user to ‘pay the way you’re used to and be rewarded for every purchase you make everywhere you shop’.
For businesses, LR operates as a coalition loyalty program that democratises loyalty and makes it fair and accessible to all businesses. The high barriers to entry have typically prevented SMEs from participating in this market, and LR’s solution changes this equation.
With low barriers to entry, it allows SMEs to reward employee behaviour, against any trackable or measurable interaction, without any complex integrations, making it an affordable, powerful and flexible business tool.
Why did Scalare invest?
The Market
Australian consumers are typically lovers of loyalty programs, with over 18 million adult Australians as members. LR has identified $580bn of annual Australian consumer spend without direct earn awards, with $420bn of this total spent on debit cards. This equates to 35M of debit account holders who are currently missing out on earning any rewards – a huge gap in the market.
The loyalty program industry has lagged behind the changes in the way buyers are spending. Today’s consumers are dynamic shoppers, using multiple devices, channels and sites to make purchases. With consumers moving towards greater mobile transactions their personal data footprint grows with it.
Crucially, customers can earn points from data creation and it’s LR’s deep understanding of how to procure and leverage this data that will be in demand.
From a business perspective, typically a loyalty program takes a long time to build and is expensive to do. Major coalition programs can be complicated, restrictive and prohibitively expensive for businesses to commit to.
The LR business offering is suited to the SME market. Their solution opens up an entirely new landscape where SMEs can reward customer and employee behaviour without the typical barriers to entry.
It allows businesses to deploy loyalty/rewards solutions in non-traditional environments, agnostically, without complex integrations, against any trackable or measurable interaction.
Scalare is delighted to be supporting LR in its creation of this all-encompassing agnostic loyalty solution, designed to disrupt the siloed rewards landscape.
The Founder/Team
Loyalty Republic has a high-quality team led by joint Co-Founder and Managing Directors Tom Ingham, who is highly experienced across Loyalty, Rewards and Sales including 9 years of finance industry experience at AMEX, and Katrina Gravelle, a seasoned entrepreneur who has created, launched and sold a successful skincare business, run her own advertising agency and previously worked with start-ups across the data, media, finance and loyalty industries.
Tom and Katrina are supported by a skilled and committed team, whose experience includes decades of industry experience driving sales and marketing operations, delivering software solutions and creating successful digital ventures.
The Product/technology
The Loyalty Republic app and platform are designed to be easy to navigate for both consumers and SMEs to use. Consumers have access to the eMall (Redemption and shopping mall) which offers the opportunity to purchase products and gift cards, access discounted brands, redeem points and earn bonus points. Integrated with PayPal for payments, buyers can redeem points in full for an item, or use them as a dynamic discount on a purchase.
For businesses, the platform is simple, fast, powerful and effective to use, with options for consulting, design, servicing and user communications. There are currently two versions (Lite or Full Versions) offering choice and scalable options for businesses. It works as a SaaS model, a simple setup with low integration and a choice between a monthly service fee model or ad-hoc volume points purchases.
Businesses have access to social channels, digital advertising, partnerships and referral programs and revenue is driven by business solutions, the partnership channel, online retail partners, data and advertising and the eMall.
LR has built the platform for scalable tech and growth through partnerships, which offers free freedom, flexibility and choice, with real customer value at a low cost to their business.
The Loyalty Republic app is available for download from the App Store and Google Play stores.
Momentum
The LR MVP is built and was launched in the App Store and Google Play. It has been tested with over 1,500 users. The first distribution partnership has been signed and a strong partnerships pipeline identified.
During the next stage, LR is raising capital to enhance their tech and building additional app features; marketing to expand their partner channel and operations spend to grow the team.
Loyalty Republic will initially be looking to grow the SME offering licensing the technology and selling loyalty packages to its partners. A strong pipeline of SMEs has been developed and Loyalty Republic is expecting to see a diverse range of SMEs adopting the platform in the coming half of the year.
The Scalare Partners’ investment will enable the company to build on its SME offering. Loyalty Republic will be looking to fill the second tranche of the round in the coming months.
Giles Bourne, a Founding Partner of Scalare Partners, will join the Loyalty Republic board as Non-Executive Director and support Tom and Katrina and the team with the impending expansion plans.
If you wish to discuss this further, please contact Scalare Head of Community Pernille Aggerholm for an introduction to Tom and Katrina.
You can download the Loyalty Republic app from the App Store and Google Play stores.
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