Take your loyalty program to the Blockchain with qiibee

What is qiibee all about?

When you think qiibee think loyalty program. Not just any loyalty program but one that is built on a blockchain. A loyalty program that brings all other loyalty programs under one roof. When you think of loyalty program look at it as a coin with customers on one side and companies at the other side.

Why do we need another loyalty program are there not already enough?

Well they are but they are not effective enough.
According to Fruend (2017)
Over 100 billion worth of loyalty points remain unused this points at the ineffectiveness of the existing loyalty schemes.
Look at it from a customers perspective. A customer goes and buys stuff at a store. First he has to sign up for the loyalty program which he may or may not like to do. Once he signs up and earns a few points then he has to wait for a threshold to be reached for becoming eligible for the loyalty points to be used.

For the company

-They need to give value to the customers and build loyalty.
-Setting up a loyalty program is a difficult task and making the customer sign up and share his info is not easy either.
-Then creating an interaction with customers and inviting them for a sale or a new offer or giving them updates is not a piece of cake either. It all costs money time and skill.
-It also means assigning and maintaining an inventory readily available for redemption however this cannot be booked under accounts as profit or loss thus creating accounting issues.
-Maintaining customer loyalty databases are subject to data breach and this can cause loss of credibility for the brand.

When almost all companies run their own rewards programs it becomes difficult for a customer to choose one over the other.
In a market already crowded with loyalty programs the efficiency is more often then not lost.
So much so that reward points worth billions remain unused.
So what would qiibee achieve where the brand loyalty as a whole has failed.
Well that is just the point the brand loyalty industry is not collective. Everyone is doing their own thing.
Instead qiibee creates the opportunity to bring all the programs under one umbrella.
So let usi see from the customers perspective.

qiibee for customers

For the customer it is all about freedom. The loyalty points that he earns at a store can be traded with loyalty points of another store. As a result a customer does not feel tied down to one program. He would be encouraged to join and earn reward points which can be traded using the blockchain based underlying qiibee tokens.
So for the customer it is about flexibility, transparency and control over his /her earned rewards.

qiibee for brands

Companies and businesses are given the option to use the qiibee platform and use the open source tools provided to build their own app over the qiibee platform.

The customers would be able to hold their loyalty points as loyalty tokens in this wallet and trade them with other brand loyalty points. They can also trade them for QBX tokens and other crypto or redeem as fiat.

The brands use the developer kit provided by qiibee to build their loyalty program and release their loyalty tokens.
To help the brands with the development of the loyalty program an open source development kit and easy to integrate API is provided by qiibee.

qiibee and the hybrid blockchain advantage

A note worthy feature worth mentioning here is that qiibee networks uses 2 blockchains.
Its own blockchain is used for running and operating the loyalty program. On this blockchain the brands issue their tokens and the end users exchange their earned tokens. It is fast, reliable and the cost of transaction which is nil to start with can be controlled by the qiibee network.

The other blockchain is the ethereum blockchain on which the qiibee tokens QBX reside and operate as they are standard ERC20 tokens.
The idea of the QBX tokens is to provide the entry and exit points to the qiibee blockchain.

This is how the process works?
A brand would need the QBX tokens to begin the setting up of the loyalty program. This is the entry point of getting into the qiibee ecosystem.
They can assign a budget and obtain the corresponding amount of QBX tokens.

Thus the brand loyalty tokens that the brand creates are always backed by the QBX tokens that have a distinct value on the ethereum blockchain. This value would fluctuate and an end user can hold the tokens in his possession and wait for the value to appreciate.

The use of ethereum backed QBX tokens creates value for the loyalty rewards token.
The transaction speed of the ethereum network is 15 transaction per second which is very slow. Also the transaction fee has varied from $0.4 to $4 per transaction.There is another reason why qiibee uses its own private chain to do the transactions. Which is both economical as well as fast.

This is quite an ingenious feature. It makes me look at the team who are a fine balance of people who have a lot of experience in the brand loyalty industry as well as blockchain technology.
So can this team pull off such an ingenious project?

The Team

qiibee entered the loyalty market in 2015 and worked with over 900 brands.
As part of their strategy and roadmap they have tested the blockchain model with 2 brands

Lattesso roll-out: A loyalty program for Lattesso the 2nd largest coffee producer in Switzerland.
"Currently, Lattesso operates in seven different countries across Europe and Asia (DE,
CH, AT, BE, NLD, LUX, RU) and has so far sold approximately 14 million cups of coffees in
2018."
Here 2 million coffee cups were distributed. Each had a code under Lattesso cookie.This code could be redeemed for LTS or Lattessocoin on www.lattessocoin.com . New users were asked to open a Lattesso wallet.Through this a user specific qiibee account was created. Here all the brand tokens and LTS coins can be stored and their value monitored.
The development of redemption strategy is underway.

Sausalitos roll-out
This rollout involved qiibee teaming up with the German bar chain Sausalitos
Out of the 41 locations across Germany serving 4 million customers each year 5 locations have been ear marked for the rollout that is scheduled to happen on 15th of June 2018.
Here Sausalitos would act as a reseller for their partner brands.
As an example given in its white paper if Sausalitos wants to push Bacardi than it would give rewards called Cryptolitos to its customers. It would ask Bacardi to buy Cryptolitos.
For this test phase 333.333 QBX are distributed.

What is further reassuring is that they are well on their path to the goals set in their roadmap.

After having tested the business model in the DACH region of Europe it would grow in Europe and take on other markets like Asia.

More Information & Resources:

• qiibee Website
• qiibee WhitePaper
• qiibee Telegram
• qiibee Medium
• qiibee Twitter
• qiibee Facebook
• qiibee Instagram
• qiibee Linkedin
• qiibee Google Plus

https://steemit.com/crypto/@originalworks/350-steem-60-bonuses-airdrop-sponsored-writing-contest-qiibee
Currently there is an airdrop where you can get some cool QBX tokens https://airdrop.qiibee.com/
qiibee2018