Wednesday, July 17, 2013

The Coming of Branded Currencies- A Disruptive Innovation In the Making?

It is not many times that I discuss both disruptive innovation and money. The HRB Blog Network recently published a piece discussing the growth of loyalty programs, coupons, gift cards, etc. as a growing disruptive innovation or as the authors call it branded currencies.  The authors state in part...


This is changing as coupons, gift cards, and loyalty points all become digital — and, more important, mobile. Mobile enables all of this purchasing power to converge in one place, and potentially be used interchangeably and collectively, always within easy reach for consumers.

What does this mean for retailers and brands? The mistake would be to think that they can keep doing what they have always done, but just add a little digital to it. Instead, retailers need to think about coupons, gift cards, and loyalty points not only as three separate tools, but as different forms of Branded Currency.

Economists define currency as a store of value and a medium of exchange. All of these instruments are stores of value, and by going digital and mobile, they become far more effective mediums of exchange.

The first wave of this convergence has made it easier for consumers to use their coupons or points for payment. Card-linked offers enable consumers to load coupons to their credit cards or loyalty accounts in advance of purchase. Valid offers are automatically applied as a credit when consumers' cards are scanned at the point of sale. Consumers like it because they don't need to remember or present individual coupons. Another approach is Shop-with-Points. As an example, Amazon enables consumers to use their credit card loyalty points as a way to pay for purchases on the site. Shoppers can see their balance and apply their points as easily as using a gift card or credit card.
Where the first wave made possible convertibility, the second wave introduces much greater convenience. Mobile wallets, like Apple's Passbook, bring coupons, gift cards, and loyalty cards together in one place without the constraints of a physical wallet. This innovation is good, but it's a bit of a horseless carriage, still tied to the mental model of a wallet. Consumers still need to manually figure out which instruments can be combined and which cannot, prioritize them based on expirations, calculate the math on their own, and then present them at point-of-sale one at a time.

The third wave will be the mobile portfolio manager, the automobile to the mobile wallet's horseless carriage, which marries the convertibility of the first wave with the convenience of the second. When you treat coupons, cards, and points as convertible instruments, fully leverage the power of digital and mobile technology, and add intelligence into the system, you get an entirely new possibility: calculating and comparing purchasing power, converting currencies, prioritizing usage, and dynamically creating scannable barcodes or other methods for combined payment. Soon consumers will be managing their Branded Currency the way they use Mint to manage their bank, credit, investment, and other financial accounts.


This is all well and good, but the authors fail to recognize that the unless legal tender laws are repealed in some fashion, the so-called branded currencies will be nothing more than glorified and technologically sophisticated loyalty programs or coupons.  Legal tender law require that all debts to the US government be paid in dollars. Essentially, an implicit convertibility exists as long legal tender laws exist. An innovation, to be truly disruptive, needs to operates outside of the established value change. Any innovation that plugs into the established market will be prone to failure.



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