BitRewards is a blockchain-based loyalty and rewards program for businesses worldwide. What makes BitRewards unique is that participating businesses use the platform to reward customers with cryptocurrencies instead of other alternatives.
As mentioned earlier, all kinds of businesses are welcome and since everything is digital, business owners can easily scale their BitRewards loyalty program as their business grows over time.
BitRewards is based on GIFTD, a motivational marketing SaaS for SMEs that has been (and still is) on the market for over 5 years. GIFTD was extremely successful and effective in the market, with participating small and medium-sized businesses enjoying a 17% increase in revenue on average thanks to the platform’s value proposition.
We recently sat down with Alex Egorov, the CEO of BitRewards to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.
Hi, Alex. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and BitRewards?
Before I started GIFTD and BitRewards, I was working in banking for more than 15 years. I finished my banking career 5 years ago as a Vice President in charge of International Operations for one of the major Russian banks. And so as a formerly financial guy I like dealing with fintech and applying different technologies in different businesses. Briefly, that’s what I am.
Tell us about how you came up with the idea of BitRewards. Did you face a problem within the loyalty program industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for BitRewards to fill?
We identified a clear gap — there were no comprehensive loyalty software schemes for small and medium businesses, so that’s why GIFTD — a parent company of BitRewards — started creating a software for online stores in the retail industry. In that sense, BitRewards is a blockchain spinoff of this successful business we have been running for five years.
What do you think is the biggest problem BitRewards will solve and why is it important to solve?
Basically, the problem is very important: every year millions of retailers spend in excess of $20 billion on software that improves the loyalty of their customers. So they do it only in order to stay in the market. With BitRewards, they receive this software for free, and they only need to purchase BIT tokens from exchanges to reward their customers. For customers, it means that they receive not a useless bonus, or points, or whatever, but a liquid asset that they can spend on purchases, exchange for other cryptocurrencies or fiat money and whatever. So it is basically a win-win situation for all.
Many retailers will definitely be interested in working with BitRewards but they may worry that it’d be too complex to make it work with their business. Can you explain more on how can businesses connect to the BitRewards network? I understand that it is as simple as installing the GIFTD extension but can you explain furthermore on that?
As for now, BitRewards is compatible with most existing e-commerce systems (Magento, Shopify, WordPress, Ecwid, etc.). It is easy to integrate and has a simple API. That’s how we plan our expansion toward different e-commerce businesses.
I understand that BitRewards are targeting SMEs at the moment. Are there any plans to implement BitRewards in large businesses or retailers (e.g Walmart or H&M)? If yes, what are your steps in ensuring this happens and how soon do you plan to make it happen?
We have such plans. Actually, we are negotiating with giant retailers in China and Southeast Asia to start pilot integrations, and as we reconcile every detail we will make it public.
How flexible is a business’ ability to set the actions that can be rewarded in BitRewards? For example, some businesses may want to reward customers for spending time on their website or reward them for subscribing to newsletters.
Are businesses able to do that or are they restricted to actions such as only being able to offer cashback on purchases or rewarding customers for referral purchases?
Our business model presupposes that customers of the online stores participating in BitRewards Network will receive BIT as a cash-back for certain configurable amount or percent on their purchases, purchases of the friends that they referred, to the store, shares and likes in social networks and other actions. So it a very big room for customization for any businesses’ needs.
The cryptocurrency market took a plunge recently compared to the end of the last year where nearly every cryptocurrency dropped in value. What is the team’s plan on overcoming this problem if the value of BIT is affected by a similar situation in the future? Are there plans to help businesses and customers at least retain the value of BIT in a bear market?
To prevent any sharp fluctuations of the BIT tokens rate, a liquidity smart contract will be created on the basis of Bancor protocol. We had a preliminary agreement with Bancor, and will also seek further opportunities for making our BIT token more liquid and safe from market swings.
Since the platform itself is free, what is BitRewards’ revenue model in the future other than the ICO? Are there any services or products that are offered to businesses other than the loyalty program?
BitRewards Network profits from the growth in value of the BIT token, therefore it provides basic customer software and apps for the retailers free of charge. So we create an essential incentive for e-commerce businesses to purchase our tokens from exchanges, whereas our software solution becomes totally free.
Congratulations on your recent partnerships with AdHive and Mark.Space. Can you explain more on what these partnerships achieve and what benefits do they bring to the users of the BitRewards platform?
Yes, sure! We met on board two great partners from the crypto sphere (as well as TUI, GoPro and WarnerMusic group from regular businesses) to fruitfully work together:
Since MARK.SPACE enables companies to sell digital content like music, videos, books, images as well as real merchandise in their Shopping District, BitRewards will supply those e-commerce businesses with the cutting-edge loyalty software, thus increasing sales and driving the profits up.
With AdHive, BitRewards will co-op as follows: influenсer takes the order in the AdHive system, receives the task and promo-code (marker) from BitRewards, according to which the audience of the influencer can get some bonuses in the partner loyalty program.
It can be said that both partnerships are oriented towards the markets of the future — for a number of reasons these businesses domain don’t exist or are very poor at the moment. But that’s how we define partnerships — working together for the future market. Success is inevitable in that case.
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Loyalty and cashback programs have long been the go-to choice for businesses to reward customers. This is partly due to the fact that it’s well-known among today’s consumers but more importantly, it helps to boost customer loyalty and trust which are two major factors in generating revenue. The problem, however,
