Merchant Offers

Summary

Kard provides the endpoints required to view and filter merchant offers for your cardholders. We work with merchants to provide a large ecosystem of varied offers to provide cardholders with the optimal reward experience via National and Local Card Linked Offers, as well as Affiliate deals.

Included Features

Defined Offer Sources

Kard provides two types of sources through our merchant and partner networks. 

1. Card Linked Offers (CLO) - Both National and Local merchant offers are provided through the Kard platform. A CLO does not require any activation or interaction from the cardholder, with Kard’s Transaction Matching Algorithm identifying rewards as soon as the card is used at a relevant merchant. For a full list of live offers, please work with your Kard Account Manager. 
   a. CLOs are available for both online and in store purchases.
   b. CLOS vary on reward activations, amounts, dates, and terms and conditions.

Defined Reward Commission Types

Kard provides two reward commission types.

1. Percent - For example, 5% back on a purchase of $200, for $10 back.
2. Flat - For example, $5 back on a purchase, regardless of amount.

Filter on Offers

Out of the box filtering of rewards is provided to enable cardholders to quickly find and use the most relevant CLOs to them. Kard’s API is built to minimize implementation effort required on our partner’s side. Currently, the platform enables filtering on the below parameters.

1. Location - View offers by the corresponding longitude / latitude, city, state, or zip code of a store location.
2. Offer Type - View offers available to online or instore shopping.

Targeted Offers

The CLO product allows merchants to segment consumers based on purchase history. This enables flexibility for our merchants to hit a number of use cases, maximizing return on ad spend and encouraging brands to continue use of the Kard platform. 

A typical use case of targeting would be to divide a consumer base into “New”, “Lapsed”, and “Baseline” consumers. The targeting engine is able to define any audience, based on purchase history, so depending on the brand the “New” consumer could be anyone who hasn’t made a purchase at the brand in 12 months or it could be defined as no purchase in the last two years.

Offer Qualifications

Offer qualifications are built into the platform, allowing merchants to configure CLOs that fit their marketing needs. The below features encourage more brands to join Kard’s reward ecosystem because of the flexibility it provides.

1. Minimum and Maximum Transaction Amount - Reward cardholders with a CLO only if the transaction is below or above a defined amount. For example, a cardholder must purchase over $50 worth of items to receive 10% cashback.
2. Minimum and Maximum Reward Amount - Set a minimum or maximum value a cardholder can be awarded per transaction. For example, award a cardholder 10% cashback, up to $75.
3. Store Locations - For in-store rewards, identify specific store locations that are valid for a CLO.
4. One-time CLO Redemptions - Only reward a customer for a CLO once. This is specifically relevant for subscription offers.
5. Limited Time Offers - Offers with set start and expiration dates.

View Detailed Information of a Merchant’s Store

Kard keeps updated store location details for merchants providing active offers. As an issuer, you can pull relevant information on a store location and share it with your cardholders, enabling real-time geo-targeting within your application. Details include:

1. Address
2. Longitude and Latitude
3. Phone Number
4. Store Hours

Issuer Portal

The Kard Portal experience for Issuers will provide Issuer partners more visibility into Kard’s reward ecosystem and their transaction data. It will also enable partners to submit & track support requests on a centralized UI. You can see examples of the portal below.

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Implementation Details

For an overview of how the Merchant Offers functionality integrates with the rest of the platform, view the Getting Started guide. The below information is focused on the specifics of implementing Merchant Offers functionality. Kard is an API product, providing high configurability to fit your rewards program, and implementation patterns will vary.

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Display Card Linked Offers to your Cardholders

Below are notes on what is required to correctly display card linked offers to your program’s cardholders.

1. Offer Display - CLO merchants and their offers are retrieved via the Merchant endpoints. The offer object is aligned to each merchant, where a merchant can contain multiple offers.
2. Offer Update Frequency - Merchant offers do change within the Kard platform. Frequency depends on a number of factors, including if the offer is at the national or local level. It is recommended that the offers are pulled at a minimum of once a day for your program to reflect the most up to date information.
3. Information Required on Display- For each merchant, a number of fields are displayed at the merchant level and additional fields at the offer level. At a minimum, your cardholder must see the below information within the rewards program application: 
   a. Name of the Merchant - “name”
   b. Image URL (where applicable) - “imgUrl”
   c. Offer Terms (where applicable) - “terms”‍
4. Inactive or Expired Offers - With fair warning, merchants may remove offers from the Kard reward ecosystem. In that case, a merchant offer will be moved to inactive status. Inactive merchants and offers are not displayed from the Merchant endpoints. In this scenario, transactions that were authorized before the offer was moved to inactive status will be counted as a reward. 
   a. Offers can also expire, if set as a scheduled campaign by the merchant. The “expirationDate” within the Merchant endpoints alerts our clients to this fact. Similar to inactive offers, if an offer expires, authorized transactions are counted before that date.‍
5. Offer Go-Live Timetable - Once a new offer is available to Kard, it typically takes 24-48 hours for an online offer to go live and 3-4 days for an in-store offer.‍
6. Store Location Display - Store Location Details are displayed via the Location endpoints. Store details can be displayed for all stores of a merchant or on an individual store basis.