Member Spotlight — Ascenda: How fintechs can win with loyalty in a digital-first economy
Loyalty has been a proven magnet for engagement in financial services, but traditional models are no longer enough. Cashback, once seen as the prized reward, is now an expectation—offering little beyond short-term incentives at the expense of margin erosion.
As consumer expectations evolve in a digital-first economy, fintechs are rethinking how loyalty could drive long-term engagement and sustained value. The shift is clear: winning loyalty strategies need to be embedded into everyday financial experiences and hyper-personalized.
At Ascenda, we’ve introduced Loyalty-as-a-Service (LaaS), providing financial brands with the end-to-end capabilities to deliver remarkable loyalty programs and customer experiences that drive sustained engagement and revenue-generating results.
Loyalty has to keep up with the way consumers engage
Australian consumers are engaging with financial services in a variety of ways, usually driven by convenience or habit: digital wallets, BNPL, and embedded finance have fundamentally changed spending behavior, making traditional loyalty models increasingly outdated.
What today’s consumers expect:
Personalized engagement that aligns with their lifestyle and financial behaviors.
Instant access to relevant rewards, without friction or delays.
More than cashback, with value-based experiences like travel perks, merchant-backed offers, and exclusive partnerships.
According to our State of Loyalty: Commercial Cards study, 70% of card holders prefer value-based rewards over cashback. This shift underscores the need for fintechs to move beyond transactional incentives and create loyalty experiences that drive habit formation and long-term customer relationships.
Loyalty-as-a-Service: A smarter model for fintechs
For many fintechs, building a compelling loyalty program has traditionally been costly, complex, and time-consuming. This is where our LaaS platform provides a plug-and-play solution that eliminates operational complexity and enables fintechs to offer world-class rewards experiences that can turn loyalty into a serious revenue engine.
Our industry-leading global rewards ecosystem allows fintechs to easily launch value-based rewards propositions, which includes:
Premium travel rewards to create aspirational value and exclusivity.
Merchant-backed offers driving increased transaction volume and engagement.
Personalized experiences to reward behaviors and top-of-wallet usage.
Frictionless and instant redemptions embedded within existing financial journeys both online and the offline POS.
This ecosystem-driven approach between loyalty, customer engagement, and technology ensures that fintechs can differentiate their offerings without the burden of building and maintaining complex loyalty infrastructures.
Beyond cash back: the future of fintech loyalty
A well-designed loyalty program does more than just reward spending—it drives deeper customer engagement and lifetime value. The most successful fintechs are shifting from purely transaction-based rewards to loyalty models that:
Encourage habitual platform usage, incentivizing behaviors like app engagement, referrals, and multi-product adoption.
Leverage AI and data insights to deliver highly personalized, relevant rewards.
Integrate seamlessly with existing digital experiences, creating a natural and rewarding user journey.
By embedding real-time, contextually relevant loyalty experiences to their customers, fintechs can create deeper emotional connections with their customers—leading to stronger retention, higher spending, and increased advocacy.
The measurable impact of smarter loyalty
Loyalty isn’t just a retention tool—it’s a revenue engine. Financial brands leveraging smarter loyalty approaches can see tangible impact, including:
Higher transaction volume – Well-structured loyalty programs drive up to 20% more transactions per user.
Increased retention – Engaged loyalty members are 5X more likely to remain active compared to non-members.
Greater revenue per customer – Fintechs shifting from cashback to value-based rewards see 25-30% higher spend per cardholder.
As financial services competition intensifies, loyalty will become one of the biggest differentiators in an increasingly crowded market. The winners will be those who move beyond transactional rewards to build ecosystems and unique engagement strategies that create long-term value.
We believe that loyalty programs should be simple, seamless, and deeply integrated into each customer’s unique financial experience. Our LaaS model empowers fintechs to scale and drive bottom-line results—without the complexity.
Ready to build a better loyalty experience?
