I’ve been thinking of ways to improve the rewards network. While I don’t have all the answers, here are some thoughts:
- Most rewards partners seem to be physical businesses, not online.
I’m struggling to understand the preference towards brick and mortar. This must be some weird carryover from Skip the Dishes where the product was necessarily physical. Neo undoubtedly has a well-developed machine to onboard partners at scale. I wonder if it can be used to onboard online partners as is or with some refinements.
- Online rewards partners are impossible to find.
Brick and mortar partners have physical Neo stickers that allow both Neo and non-Neo users to see that the merchant is a rewards partners. While there is no flow with stickers to onboard non-users, online merchants don’t have an equivalent sticker to let non-Neo users know that they can get Neo cashback. The only way to discover that online partner has a reward is in the Neo app, which non-users don’t have. The flow in the app is super clunky (too many steps to get to the list, no funnel to guide user through the steps) and non-intuitive (designed for search, not discoverability). I would want something that is aligned with human behaviour, e.g. when searching for stuff online you would see that Neo rewards are there. Then you can make a decision to pay with Neo to get rewards. If they don’t have Neo, there would be a simple way for them to sign up.
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The current flow suggests to start inside the app and leave the app. This makes no sense as you will lose the users the moment they leave the app, and the process is designed to push them out. Instead, it would be a much better idea to cast your net wide and start the flow somewhere outside the app with a logical, intuitive funnel that brings the users into your product.
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With both brick and mortar and online, users can choose different methods of payment and it is no easier to pay with Neo compared to other payment methods. The problem is that there is no vertical integration – even if users use Neo (most don’t), merchants have their own payment terminals, POS, payment processors, inventory and other systems. None of this integrates with Neo. One solution to achieve integration is to produce your own terminals like Clip or Square, but this is a difficult solution as it requires hardware, shipping, installation and convincing to switch from existing solutions. With online stores, it could be a software solution that can be added somewhere on websites and in other companies apps.
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The online check out experience is generally horrible and a pain point where you are going to lose a lot of customers as they will choose other methods of payment. Would be cool to have a simple “pay with Neo” button that makes this experience much easier than searching for a physical card to type in digits/expiry date/CVV and go through many layers of clunky authentication/verification.
“Pay with Neo” could be designed so as to eliminate the friction at checkout that is present when paying using standard one-size-fits-all checkouts. For example, it could be some button that you can click that triggers a push to your phone where you authenticate yourself with a Face ID and approve a transaction in one click in the app as opposed to manually filling out card numbers.
Another use case is simplifying online experience with merchants that don’t accept cards and require account/transit/institution numbers. In this case, the current experience is typically such an extreme hassle that it could be easier to just open a Neo account to avoid it (instead of going to a branch to generate a void check or waiting for 2 hours on the phone to get through because you forgot your password or the bank is down for maintenance).