While it is no surprise that New Zealand has it’s fair share of loyalty programs including AA Smartfuel, Countdown Onecard and Fly Buys being up there on the popularity list how far are we lagging behind our tech friends abroad in keeping up with the latest technologies to make using loyalty easier and more appealing to the younger generations?
For example Woolworths in Australia (Countdowns counterpart) have the Woolworths Everyday Rewards card which is a full RFID card stored on your phone and only needs to be tapped on the terminal when you’re doing your transaction to register. No barcodes here (unless you really need it). Yet Onecard doesn’t even have an Apple Wallet variation available at the time of writing, you need to open the app to scan the barcode. Ick!
While it’s true only Woolworths has RFID loyalty in Australia with no other loyalty programs taking advantage of the feature to date, none are available in NZ at the moment. You’d suspect the Woolworths group could of shared their resources with Countdown.
Likewise none of the other major programs support adding their loyalty cards to your digital wallet, you’ll need to use the app each time.
There are always options like Stocard to add your loyalty cards and if you want to have them in your digital wallet there are also options to create custom cards either yourself or through apps such as Pass2u which allow you to use templates that others have created and add them to your digital wallet.
With 2023 here and the adaption to digital wallets thriving throughout the globe it seems like it is time for New Zealand to play catch up and offer up some digital conveniences.
A world without scanning barcodes or opening apps would be great wouldn’t it?