Is Ibotta Stealing Your Money?
The GFT™ Blockchain platform make this IMPOSSIBLE.
“Maintenance fees” are horrible, especially when a company sends them to you without warning. Ibotta has yet to receive the message that these so-called “maintenance fees” anger their customer base.
Ibotta mirrors the same business practices as airline and other “loyalty” point programs by punishing customers who don’t use their service “enough”.
The question is why?
Airlines make money through margin on loyalty points, positive working capital and breakage by selling programs to partners like credit card companies, earning interest, then targeting customers not using the miles to create “free money”.
Ibotta doesn’t have the same luxury as the airlines, as every dollar they have to give back to customers comes from their marketing or ops spend so when their outstanding liabilities aren’t redeemed their books begin to look really ugly, really fast.
One solution for Ibotta: let people “cash in” by lowering the $20 limit. That approach is expensive. Cash transfers to consumers utilizing old banking models are costly and the fees to pay via e.g. Paypal don’t make sense in their model. So the only option is to take (or steal, depending on who you talk to) the money back from the shoppers who earned it through a legal mechanism called “maintenance fees”.
The Answer:
The GFT™ Exchange utilizes blockchain technology to avoid this specific problem. When a shopper earns value (cash/fiat, digital collectibles, or Cash Back Tokens/CBT from a brand partner, grocer or other promotional partner) the value is a blockchain asset that’s loaded to an account tied to their unique ID — typically a phone number where the value is “loaded to their phone number”. The value becomes the property of the owner, forever.
For example, if shopper Alice chooses to accept a rebate, coupon or refund a number of potential future behavior paths are unlocked. She could:
- Use the CBT regardless of size of value.
- Hold the CBT against future promotions offered by brands or retail specific promotions.
- Transmit the CBT to a friend or family member, free of charge.
- Purchase collectible NFTs within the GFT™ Exchange or third party partners like an Opensea.io.
- Donate the CBT to preferred non-profit organizations.
The GFT™ exchange removes the hefty fees to make these type of operations possible through blockchain tech. The shoppers have control over the value they earned while brands and grocers no longer have to carry overdue liabilities on their books.
The future of loyalty transfers value to the users permanently. No more hidden fees, no more data selling and no more games. The Ibottas of the world will have to change their model as shoppers are getting smarter with their data and the value propositions they can choose from.
About The GFT™ Exchange:
The GFT™ Exchange is the world’s first blockchain-secured rebate and coupon issuance, fulfilment and reconciliation platform. For more information go to www.greenfenceconsumer.com
