Just In: Bakkt’s New App to Allow Conversion of Loyalty Points to Crypto and Cash

Bakkt, the New-York Stock Exchange backed crypto startup which offers physically-settled bitcoin futures and options contract has announced an all-in-one tracking app for consumers, where one can track loyalty points, gift cards or any other form of digital rewards. The new service would allow users to convert their rewards and loyalty points for cash or even one another.

Loyalty memberships and digital rewards have become a core part of the marketing strategy and by one estimate there are over 3 billion members of various loyalty programs offered by numerous companies. However, most of these rewards are not interconvertible, for example, the credit card rewards cannot necessarily be used as a coupon for Air travel and vice versa. This makes it extremely difficult for individuals to keep track of their digital reward portfolio.

Bakkt estimates the digital assets market to be over $1.2 trillion, based on data encompassing loyalty programs, cryptocurrency markets, gift cards, and video game digital assets, among other categories.

Bakkt Aims to Create Liquidity For a Variety of Loyalty Programs

There are hundreds of loyalty membership programs and millions of customers using it in one way or another, however, the industry is scattered with little to liquidity offerings. Bakkt wants to create a business model based on liquidity for loyalty points and other similar digital rewards. The crypto startup has already partnered with a number of firms offering loyalty points and digital rewards which include the likes of credit-card providers such as American Express and Chase; restaurants such as Chipotle; and airlines such as JetBlue.

The new app is currently live but only to a selected few members where it collects the digital portfolio of the users including their bitcoin holdings and other loyalty program points.

Adam White, the President of Bakkt while talking about the new consumer app revealed that they aim to make users ‘asset agnostic,’ and explained,

“All these different siloed assets that each have the market infrastructure to them, and in a way that becomes asset agnostic for our users, allowing them the ability to buy, sell, send, receive, and pay with any of these assets as if they were cash,”