qiibee - a blockchain solution to effective loyalty program management
Shrink Your Wallet, In a Good Way!
If you're like me, you know the feeling of searching your wallet for the correct loyalty card at a place of business. You have one for gas, one for groceries, 10 for restaurants, and many others. You have so many in fact, that you cannot keep them all in your wallet at the same time and have to make a conscious effort to remember the correct ones when you head out for the day. You often find yourself at a location where you realize you have a loyalty card but it's not with you. You may need to hold the entire line up by asking them to look you up, or you may not be able to use your rewards card that time. It's tedious at times to stay on top of all the loyalty programs and make sure you're accruing and using points strategically. You may even have a dozen or so loyalty accounts opened that you'll never do anything with and that you don't have enough points to benefit from.
Although managing all these loyalty programs is sometimes a pain and often times said points go to waste, it's still a huge business worth an estimated $1.94 billion in 2016 and is projected to reach $7.3 billion by the end of 2022 according to this article from Reuters. Another interesting finding, is that users seem to be inefficient at actually using the points they earn. According to a Fruend (2017) study cited in the qiibee whitepaper, an estimated $100 Billion in points have been left unredeemed. There are a few reasons for this, users could be purposely holding onto points in case they need them at a later date, they could be saving for something specific, or they could have lost track of what points they have where. Even so, we know that loyalty programs are an important part of business, check out these articles for reference:
- The Best Loyalty Programs Go Beyond Rewards - Forbes
- Why Customer Loyalty Programs Are So Important - Forbes
- How Loyalty Programs Are Emerging as Effective Marketing Tools - Entrepreneur India
- The 7 biggest trends driving customer loyalty - MarketingLand
- Customer Loyalty: The Ultimate Guide - Hubspot (written by Sophia Bernazzani)
The issue is, we have the opportunity to earn loyalty points at so many places that those resources get scattered and are hard to keep track of. Wouldn't it be great if there was one point of access for multiple loyalty programs that would also allow us to better leverage points we're unlikely to use? That's where qiibee comes in.
Why do we need qiibee?
qiibee is a blockchain solution for loyalty programs that seeks to simplify the entire process of managing loyalty points as well as allow users to better leverage the points they earn. By providing the end users with an easy to use application interface that not only tells them each balance they have, but also gives them a total value and the ability to trade said points, managing loyalty programs goes from difficult to simple! Using a blockchain for loyalty points gives qiibee 3 distinct advantages:
Security
Centralization leads to a single point of failure. Servers crash, users make mistakes, and hackers/viruses can infiltrate even some of the most secure platforms in the world. What cannot crash, be modified via user error, or be hacked or corrupted are thousands of machines around the world running and authenticating an agreed upon digital ledger. This is one of the primary reasons why blockchain technology is here to stay and has many use cases, including tracking loyalty programs!
Real Value
I have some airline miles from when I used to travel for work. I now have 2 wonderful children at home and have stopped travelling regularly. I don't think I'll get around to using those miles before they expire. This type of thing happens all the time to people all around the world. The only "real value" of loyalty points comes if the thing you desire is provided by the source of those loyalty points and said points are redeemable for that item. In my case, those airline miles that are theoretically worth $X are worth $0 for me simply because I will not be flying anywhere this year. The qiibee platform would allow me to exchange my airline miles for QBX tokens that I could then use to purchase other loyalty points elsewhere, exchange for other cryptocurrencies, or convert to fiat.
Trustless Ecosystem
Stores don't have to worry about counterfeit loyalty points or any form of trickery. If you try to use tokens, they will search the blockchain and see that you either have those tokens or you don't. There is no way to double-spend tokens, to falsify tokens, or to spend more than your balance of tokens. You simply have them under your address or you don't, and this information is available real-time via the blockchain.
How does qiibee separate itself from competition?
If you've been following blockchain technology closely, you may have some concerns about Ethereum. You may be aware that it's restricted to about 15 tps and that in times of high volume it is very susceptible to high fees for transactions. However, it is the most ingrained and utilized platform on which to build decentralized applications and is very good or that purpose. It is advantageous and strategic to leverage such a technology when rolling out a new decentralized application, but there's no guarantee that it will scale sufficiently at the rate required to stay ahead of a growing business. Many platforms have written off ETH concerns under the assumption that further development on the ETH protocol will work out those issues. I've always been quite cautious of this strategy as it unnecessarily takes some control over that organizations future out of their hands. qiibee has taken a much smarter route than many other blockchain companies by utilizing the benefits of ETH but taking extra steps to ensure usability and scalability. For reference on the scalability of ETH, check out this visual of the most active blockchains and you can see ETH is already maxed out on CUI (Capacity Utilization Index) and is the only one with this issue.
The idea of a blockchain housing loyalty tokens is clearly wonderful, but the idea of waiting several minutes for a transaction with said points to actually complete and to have to lose a significant amount of tokens in fees would certainly spell doom for this use case. This is why qiibee has separated a private ETH based blockchain that can be used for quick and efficient transactions from the public ETH blockchain that will be used to store and trade the QBX tokens.
We already know how large the public ETH blockchain has gotten so we have some ideas on what to expect from a fresh private ETH based blockchain. We know that for the implementation of this project it should be more than suitable for the task. However, we also know that down the road we could be discussing the same issues that the public ETH network faces today. This is why qiibee is already thinking ahead and has this to say in their whitepaper:
Our first approach has been to build a private chain that is based on Ethereum. But this is not a final decision, as long as our product evolves, we will be also researching different alternatives for our private chain, whether we it would be more suitable to keep on with an Ethereum-based chain or not.
Source: qiibee whitepaper
Summary
This is the kind of forward thinking strategy that I look for in a company likely to succeed. The project is well laid out and has a history dating back to 2015 in the market as well as many connections with huge organizations. They have a solid market need, a great team, great relationships with players in the space, and a great plan including short and long term blockchain vision. Keep an eye out for the open crowd sale in Q3 of 2018!
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qiibee2018
Great piece of work. Easy to read and understand.
Im failing to understand where value of Qiibee will be coming from? in steemit value = content and human traffic. what about Qiibee?
maybe you could help me out to find the answer to this question? :)
anyway really good read. I would upvote you but my voting power is only around 50% so i need to recharge it. Till next time
Hey Piotr! Many organizations are already using a loyalty program that they run on their own right now, there have been some studies showing that it helps improve retention and gives them an edge over their competition. Moving such programs to blockchain and making them more user friendly has some similar benefits to any other blockchain use case (security, immutability, etc.).
As far as how value is generated, companies are going to have to create loyalty tokens that are tied to real world value that their customers will desire. Could come in many forms such as a free pizza for every 10 pizzas purchased or a catalog of rewards items you can turn tokens in for or even simply store credit that you earn at a fraction of what you spend in the store that adds up over time. Much like what they're likely already doing independently, it's an expense for them to fund an initiative like this. However, that expense is almost more like an investment as you foster your relationship with customers that will have recurring purchases.
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I shrunk my wallet completely and leave it at home now I just use an adhesive holder on the back of my phone that can hold up to 4 cards. I just use credit cards with built in rewards and shy away from rewards cards. please feel free to join my current Steemit #contest here https://steemit.com/contest/@isteemithard/design-isteemithard-a-profile-picture-avatar-contest-17-winner-of-16