Episode 187: Points as Programmable Currency

Episode 191: One to Many: Moving Loyalty From Standalone Programs to Connected Ecosystems

This week on Commerce Code, we are joined by MB Bell and Eileen Peacock from Valuedynamx. Eileen is SVP and General Manager for the U.S., and she'll give us the strategic, industry-level view. MB Bell is Senior Director of Partnerships, and MB is going to bring it to life with the real client stories - the partnerships, the integrations, and the campaigns that are actually running. They have joined us to talk about: * How loyalty has evolved from standalone programs into connected ecosystems; * Why partnerships - and the right mix of them - have become the real competitive differentiator; * How embedded commerce is reshaping the customer journey; and * The Valuedynamx story itself, including how the company brings the appeal of Apple products into loyalty programs to drive acquisition, engagement and redemption, and what it means to position Valuedynamx as a “Partner Connector Hub.”

Episode 190: Orchestrating the Future of Credit: How Alternative Data Pipelines are Changing the Lending Landscape

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Rikard Bandebo from VantageScore [https://www.vantagescore.com/] and Arvind Ronta from Pentadata [https://www.pentadatainc.com/]. A little about the companies - * VantageScore is a leading credit scoring company whose model is especially predictive because it uses new data sources that make it possible to provide credit scores to people even if they have limited credit history. * Pentadata is a big reason VantageScore is able to do this. Pentadata is a financial data orchestration platform – which means its customers can access many different kinds of financial data through a single point of contact, or, in software terms, a single API. Rikard and Arvind have joined us to talk about: * What’s making credit scores more accurate - things like rent and utility payments that are big predictors of consumer payment behavior, but which have been omitted from credit scoring until recently. * What it takes to get new kinds of data like that into the credit scoring system - it’s not as easy as it looks! * And what all of this means for the marketplace, from consumers to businesses.

Episode 189: The Great Shopping Shift: How AI is Rewriting the Rules of Commerce

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Tim DeSoto, the CEO & Founder of Goodlife. Goodlife is an Intelligent Personal Shopping Companion that helps people save time, money, and effort while shopping. In today’s conversation, we are talking about: * What the brand new Goodlife product does, * Why he built it - and just as importantly, * The AI tools he used to build it, and the AI capabilities Goodlife incorporates to dramatically improve the shopping experience for consumers.

Episode 188: What AI Really Means for Loyalty Programs: Speed, Personalization, and Data Protection

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Mark Lesiw, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Olive [https://www.oliveltd.com]. Olive builds digital commerce platforms for fintechs, and those platforms offer consumers fundraising, financial wellness, and membership and loyalty solutions. Today, we are talking about how he recently used AI tools to build a sophisticated customer loyalty app from start to finish in about 40 hours – the kind of thing that used to take months. It’s a sort of experimental rocket, not something that replaces Olive’s current technology. But this rocket flies, and it shows what’s possible.

Episode 187: Points as Programmable Currency

This week on Commerce Code, we speak with Keith Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Payouts Network [https://payoutsnetwork.com/]. Payouts Network’s PayNow Platform [https://payoutsnetwork.com/platform] executes instant payouts, digital credits, and pay with points - and as the name suggests, PayNow executes immediately. Today, we talk with Keith about Points as Programmable Currency. We have lived in a long period in which people, Americans especially, never questioned or even really thought much about what currency is, how it works or whether it might change. A big-picture view suggests that currency can be lots of things - and it’s not ridiculous to think that the next step in currency evolution could come out of the points/rewards/loyalty landscape.