Facebook Seems To Be Testing A Loyalty Club Feature For Retailers

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Facebook is testing a new feature on its mobile app that allows users to redeem bonuses or special discounts by having their personal Rewards QR code scanned at participating stores.

The new feature called Rewards, was spotted by TechCrunch’s Josh Constine recently, and appears as an option under the More tab on Facebook’s mobile app. When one taps it, a personalised QR code appears for a participating store to scan and provide the user with a discount, bonus, or experience. Rewards may work very similarly to a loyalty club, with businesses (and Facebook) knowing when a specific user interacts with a retailer offline. By having your personalised QR code scanned, both Facebook itself, and the business in question, know that an offline sale is being completed.

My guess is that this feature may work in conjunction with Facebook’s offline sales ad objective, but there isn’t much more information to really go on. Facebook did however confirm that it is running the test, saying,

[quote]To help businesses continue to connect with customers where they are, we’re running a small test that enables people to use the Facebook app to collect and redeem Rewards when they make a purchase at a participating store.[/quote]

Image credit: Josh Constine (TechCrunch)

Similar, but not quite the same is an older feature – Facebook Offers, which has been available to users since 2012. Marketers create offers on behalf of their Facebook Pages and users can claim them from within the social network, and then go to redeem them at a real store. It’s highly unlikely that Facebook will ever reward users for social actions (engagement cannot be used as currency), so a loyalty club scenario is the most likely.