American Express updates its rewards program with Hyperledger Blockchain

In a partnership with Boxed, the company is leveraging Hyperledger to enable merchants to create personalized Membership Rewards programs for AmEx card customers

Financial services giant American Express is integrating Blockchain into its rewards program in partnership with digital retailer Boxed.

The US retailer Boxed is a website that does not require membership and offers deliveries of large-scale packages directly through the website or through the mobile application.

American Express announced on Wednesday that it is taking advantage of Hyperledger to allow merchants to create personalized Membership Rewards programs for American Express cardholders. Your initial test with Boxed will allow members to earn five times the normal number of points on certain products, according to information shared with CoinDesk.

The announcement is framed in the context of the incorporation into the Hyperledger project that the company made public at the beginning of this year.

In the process, American Express will create a private channel in its Blockchain chain with each merchant to facilitate the transfer of information. Merchants can create smart contracts that automatically satisfy rewards program offers. Once the offers are live, "smart contracts will automatically pass the anonymous information of the transaction to American Express using their private channel of the block chain," the company said.

As a result, the merchant will be able to control what offers they are making, as well as customize their Membership Rewards structure. In addition, establishments may "assign bonuses to items at the product level or [stock keeping unit]".

However, American Express reserves the right to regulate the products or brands that are promoted.

The company hopes to establish traders with the new system "in a matter of weeks", in contrast to the time it takes to incorporate a new partner.

This is not American Express's first foray into rewards with Blockchain technology, since the company filed a patent last year outlining a possible rewards program that would be stored in a block chain.