Mastercard has recently teamed up with Swoo to offer a cashback scheme to consumers in the form of ‘Swoo Loyalty Tokens’ on everyday transactions. Swoo is an all-in-one mobile wallet service that streamlines digital payments by allowing loyalty cards, crypto and traditional bank cards to be stored in one place. The company has 14 million monthly active users in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia.
A successful pilot was completed in January, which saw over 17,000 participants increase card spend by 56% and avail themselves of the 5% ‘Tokenback’ program.
Swoo’s co-founder, Filipp Shubin, announced that the Mastercard partnership will target:
Emerging countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines and Indonesia, [where] there are billions of users who have MasterCard and Visa cards, but don’t have access to Google Pay
and
Countries with big market share of Huawei smartphones, since due sanctions from the US government, there are no Google services on top of these phones.
Through the program, consumers will gain loyalty points in cryptocurrency (Swoo Loyalty Tokens) for every contactless purchase made via the app with Mastercards. The rewards can be instantly exchanged to other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin or USDT, on the Swoo app or exchanged for fiat through partner services.
Mastercard has embraced the potential of Web3, with previous projects like the Music Pass NFTs in partnership with Polygon to support Web3 musicians and ‘Mastercard Crypto Credential’ to enhance trust for consumers and businesses transacting using blockchain technology. Managing director, Denis Filippov, affirmed that the partnership with Swoo is a further example of Mastercard’s commitment to:
expanding the possibilities of using digital payment instruments in order to make the process of payments as convenient, technologically advanced and safe as possible.
The Swoo partnership is the latest example of increasing integration of blockchain technology and traditional payment services. With global payments giants Visa and Mastercard advancing various Web3 strategies, this gap is likely to continue to narrow in the coming years. The partnership is also another example of innovative loyalty schemes using blockchain based solutions to drive customer loyalty and engagement.
By Kelly Kim and Steven Pettigrove