This week on Commerce Code we speak with Ingrid Wilson, Head of Partnerships & Client Growth at Olive. Olive builds digital commerce platforms for fintechs - and those platforms offer consumers fundraising, financial wellness, and membership and loyalty solutions. Today we are talking about: The buy vs. build decision fintechs are making as they create customer-facing capabilities Risks that change that buy vs. build decision - and other factors like speed and cost The talent market - and the size of fintech in the global scheme of things ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Alex Adelman, CEO & Co-Founder of Lolli. Lolli is a cashback and bitcoin rewards platform that lets users earn rewards at over 25,000 leading stores and brands. Lolli is based in New York City and founded in 2018 by Alex. In the interview, we talk about: Lolli’s bank-integrated card-linked offer platform bitcoin-driven loyalty rewards rich transactional data used to create compelling experiences and offers for consumers, and there are a few detours into psychology, history, finance and technology to boot ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Kelli Hobbs, VP, Head of US Business Development at Valuedynamx, and Paras Joshi, Strategy & Development Officer at Valuedynamx. Valuedynamx is a leading global provider of purchase rewards, and they are a part of Collinson, which provides a leading global travel ecosystem.   We are talking about: Challenges in the increasingly competitive loyalty space Ways to maintain or enhance engagement among loyalty program members How to increase value to consumers and merchants by making program points redeemable where consumers most want to redeem th ..read more

This week on Commerce Code, Dan is coming back from a conference on Web3 at the University of Chicago - he was there to interview Ryne Miller, the former General Counsel of FTX U.S. They had a fascinating conversation and Dan is reflecting on some of his takeaways from the conference overall:   Scandals and whether they have anything to do with Web3 or innovation Risk and innovation - and different kinds of risk Global markets and innovation   Stay tuned as we creep up and look over the precipice of the volcano at the risks and possibilities of Web3 and cryptocurrencies ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Debby Lee, Senior Director of Partnerships at Cartera, A Rakuten Company. As a division of Rakuten, Cartera is the largest source of Shop & Earn offers in the U.S. and Canada. And as we found out in the interview, Rakuten means “optimism” in Japanese. Indeed it’s an optimistic episode this week as we’re talking about the consumer in 2024 and holiday shopping as we round out 2023. We hit: Changes in consumer behavior - “the great trade-down” to more affordable brands Persistent spending among affluent consumers How this impacts loyalty program plann ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jeff Mankoff, Founder & CEO of vPromos. We're talking about current challenges with the CLO ecosystem and business models, as well as process and technology simplification as a potential disruptor in CLO and fintech more broadly ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jeremy Frick, Amy Mullins and Natali Ryzhikova from BN, an Augeo Company. We're talking AI, humans, paid media and organic media. Brand Networks describes itself as pioneers in AI-driven social technologies that revolutionize global audience engagement—empowering organizations to deliver unrivaled brand experiences through authentic, scalable solutions that define the social landscape through technology innovation. We’re going to unpack that in the interview - What does that mean in practice? What’s the role for human expertise? Where does AI fit in? H ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jehan Luth, CEO & Founder of Banyan. Banyan uses item-level receipt data to power commercial and consumer applications for merchants and financial institutions. We get Jehan's angles on data, data exchange and data science in this interview ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Sam Panzer from Talon.One, which is based in Berlin, Germany. Sam is the Director of Industry Strategy at Talon.One, helping brands assess the business potential of refining their promotions and loyalty approach. We talk with Sam about: What the retail and payments spaces look like in Germany - how that's different from other markets like the UK and USA - and what that means for loyalty Some of the challenges of different data rules and places where there are opportunities to build out better rewards and offers by being smarter about how to use data ..read more

This week on Commerce Code we speak with Jill Moser, the Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty and Offers at Mastercard Data & Services. Mastercard Data & Services is the professional services arm of Mastercard, enabling businesses to drive stronger value beyond the transaction. We're planning to cover a lot of ground - including: Consumer preferences and discovery - are people still prioritizing experiences over things, and how does that change merchants' approach to the market? How do we create seamless experiences for consumers? and We'll get Jill's perspective on the future of o ..read more