Merchant configurable loyalty system

Abstract

With greater frequency, POS (point of sale) devices are being deployed for retail loyalty applications. The current process is for each of these applications to be custom programmed for each merchant. Such custom application development significantly increases the cost beyond the reach of small to midsize merchants. This invention is an “out-of-the-box”, turnkey retail marketing solution that empowers individual merchants to set up and configure their own customer loyalty applications using their own unique cards or tokens, or by enrolling compatible cards and/or tokens from other programs. Now smaller merchants can benefit from the same powerful marketing programs that were previously only available to the larger national chain stores. These powerful programs will help merchants build a larger and more loyal base of customers by: Identify existing loyal customers Build sales among existing customers Help attract and hold new customers Increase average transaction size and purchase frequency Enable more efficient cross-promotion of products or services to preferred customers on a “one to one basis.” Executed transactions then sent from the terminal back to the server where they are added to a database of all transaction data. Merchants can access this data over the internet and use powerful reporting tools to extract and manage their own data. This can be extended to accommodate future enhancements such as yield management and smart marketing programs targeted at specific cardholders or demographic groups. This simple, streamlined process allows merchants to setup and administer their own accounts without requiring customer service support. Cardholders can also access their account data for balance checking, enrollment/update profile, and previous transaction review.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.