Barclaycard signs contract for national programme
Barclaycard has advanced its plans for a UK-wide loyalty programme by signing an agreement with French IT company Welcome Real-time to provide the scheme’s infrastructure.
The issuer, which first announced the scheme in March this year, has also assembled a 200-strong team of marketing, operations and IT staff to establish the programme in conjunction with UK retailers.
Welcome will provide the software that will enable cardholders to participate in a programme that is expected to encompass retailers ranging from sole traders to major high street names.
Dan Salmons, director of payment innovations at Barclaycard commented: “Barclaycard has close to 90,000 retailer relationships, many of which we expect to participate in the programme, and we believe this scheme will change the way people shop in the UK.”
He says the objective is to develop a “simple, hassle-free rewards scheme”.
The scheme will be contactless card-based – Barclaycard is in the process of migrating all of its debit and credit card to contactless chips. The programme will compete with Tesco’s Clubcard and the Nectar multi-partner scheme (of which Barclaycard was a partner until 2005).