It’s not every day you see a loyalty vendor get purchased by a tech company, but that’s exactly what happened on July 8, 2019. InComm, a payments technology company, has announced the acquisition of Meridian Loyalty, a full-service incentives business that creates loyalty and engagement programs for large corporations. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Meridian Loyalty clients include Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies from across the globe.
With this acquisition, InComm will strengthen its incentives business by creating loyalty solutions for corporations through flexible reward offerings and member-centric design and management tools for B2C, B2B, and employee programs.
The move expands InComm’s capabilities from the specialized delivery of stored-value rewards to a comprehensive suite of end-to-end services for brand-focused incentive, loyalty, and engagement programs, including travel and merchandise redemptions.
“Incentives and rewards have become essential tools for brands to engage their audiences, so we are working towards helping our customers maximize the performance of their programs,” says Brooks Smith, CEO of InComm. “The Meridian Loyalty team brings decades of experience and technological expertise in creating effective incentive, loyalty, and engagement programs, and we could not be more excited to welcome them to the InComm family.”
Sam Toumayan, President and Owner of Meridian Loyalty, adds, “Meridian disrupted the incentives industry in the 80s and 90s with the introduction of the MeridiCard, the industry’s first reloadable debit card, so our point of view has been rewards-agnostic from day one. We’re incredibly excited to be joining the InComm team and finding innovative ways to drive positive client outcomes.”
The Incentive Research Foundation reported in its 2019 Trends Study that fewer than 30 percent of corporate buyers track return on investment for incentive travel programs, while 53 percent of corporate buyers for merchandise and gift card programs do not use reporting or analysis to evaluate the performance of their programs.
InComm will assist brands to overcome these challenges through consultation services grounded in data-driven, predictive analysis and tools. This approach will provide actionable insights that will maximize participation rates and ROI for customer incentive, loyalty, and engagement programs.
It will be interesting to see how Meridian’s years of experience and technological expertise enhance InComm’s services. Toumayan’s emphasis on innovation could indicate that this a company we should be watching to see new technologies that impact the loyalty space.