In Nigeria, subscribers on MTN’s Pulse tariff plan earn factors each time they purchase airtime. Over time, these factors might be transformed into information bundles. Supermarkets in Lagos and world wide run related methods, rewarding prospects with loyalty factors they will redeem on future purchases.
However these programmes function in silos. Factors earned on airtime can’t be used at a grocery retailer. A grocery store’s loyalty card presents no worth at a gas station. Every model builds its personal ecosystem, and prospects’ rewards stay trapped inside it.
Factors Africa, a Ghana-based fintech, believes that fragmentation is the chance.
The startup is constructing what it describes as Sub-Saharan Africa’s first shared loyalty community, a system that permits a number of retailers to concern and redeem a single reward forex to its customers.
To assist that imaginative and prescient, it has raised $2 million from VestedWorld, an early-stage enterprise capital agency. The funding will probably be used to finance its rollout in Ghana, strengthen its infrastructure, and assist enlargement into new African markets over the subsequent 18 months.
Constructing a loyalty coalition mannequin for Africa
Factors Africa is led by Andrew McBarnett and Don Cochrane, executives with a long time of expertise in coalition loyalty methods throughout Canada, the UK, and Latin America. Each beforehand labored on large-scale loyalty programmes corresponding to Air Miles, the place a number of airline manufacturers take part in a shared rewards programme for patrons.
In mature markets, coalition loyalty programmes have turn into a major industrial infrastructure. Canada’s Air Miles, for instance, has enrolled greater than 9.7 million members, permitting prospects to earn rewards from greater than 400 manufacturers and retail places throughout the nation.
Whereas loyalty programmes exist throughout Africa, Factors Africa believes that they continue to be largely proprietary. Telecoms, banks, gas retailers, and supermarkets function separate methods with no shared infrastructure connecting them.
“We created the know-how to be the glue between all of these objects that you just [users] purchase every single day as a way to be rewarded,” McBarnett mentioned. “We reward members for on a regular basis purchasing.”
Launched in Ghana in December 2025, Level Africa integrates collaborating retailers right into a shared loyalty forex; a buyer’s spending throughout grocery retailers, telecommunications, gas, and different collaborating classes contributes reward factors to 1 unified stability.
As a substitute of ready months to build up sufficient factors inside a single retailer, prospects earn right into a central pockets that aggregates worth from a number of transactions throughout sectors.
“The one factor that you just [users] must do is to decide on the companions which are with us, and you then’re going to earn the identical forex, which goes to make you earn and redeem sooner,” mentioned Leandro Torres, the corporate’s chief working officer.
How the system works
Factors Africa operates the know-how layer that tracks transactions and manages the loyalty forex. Retailers determine how a lot every level is value, based mostly on their advertising and marketing budgets.
The corporate presents two ranges of integration for its Utility Programming Interface (API). Deep integrations join on to a service provider’s know-how stack, permitting inventory-level visibility. Lighter integrations depend on fee affirmation, corresponding to cellular cash transactions, to concern factors towards a basket of products with out requiring the service provider to hyperlink on to Factors Africa’s API.
When a buyer completes a transaction, factors are robotically credited to their central pockets and are accrued so long as spending happens inside collaborating retailers. When these factors are redeemed at a collaborating service provider, Factors Africa settles the worth change between community individuals to make sure that the price of rewards is distributed in keeping with prior agreements.
Past issuing factors, the startup says it makes use of superior synthetic intelligence (AI) and analytics to foretell when a person is prone to cease visiting a store and set off a personalised loyalty supply to retain them. It aggregates transactional indicators throughout its community to create a multi-sector view of spending behaviour, permitting retailers to refine concentrating on methods.
“AI offers us scale to do it in additional actual time,” Torres added, explaining how predictive instruments can establish prospects liable to stopping patronage after which set off presents earlier than they disengage.
A guess on shared infrastructure
Factors Africa doesn’t instantly change present loyalty programmes. Itcompetes not directly with proprietary loyalty programmes operated by telecom suppliers, banks, and retailers. Proprietary loyalty refers to reward methods which are owned and operated by a single firm, the place factors earned can solely be redeemed inside that model’s ecosystem.
Its pitch is structural: somewhat than constructing one other closed loop, it desires to offer shared infrastructure.
The startup says it has secured partnerships in Ghana with MTN, Jumia, Uber, Melcom, Star Oil, and Entry Financial institution to place its infrastructure throughout a number of spending classes.
Factors Africa generates income when factors are issued and redeemed inside its community. Companions fund the worth of the factors they need to allocate, and the corporate earns its margin from facilitating the reward-earning and redemption course of.
Constructing a coalition loyalty community in Africa comes with structural hurdles. The corporate should navigate regulatory compliance, persuade rivals to share infrastructure, and educate customers on how a shared rewards forex works.
The corporate says its rapid focus is on rising consciousness and simplifying the incomes and redemption course of to make sure the worth proposition is evident from the primary transaction.
Ghana is the place to begin of its loyalty coalition providing. Over the subsequent 18 months, Factors Africa plans to increase into new African markets, beginning with Nigeria, adopted by Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya.
The long-term aim is for the loyalty forex to be helpful all over the place, changinghow buying energy is considered throughout the continent.
“We need to be the pockets of Africa regarding loyalty,” McBarnett mentioned.
Elevate your perspective with NextTech Information, the place innovation meets perception.
Uncover the newest breakthroughs, get unique updates, and join with a worldwide community of future-focused thinkers.
Unlock tomorrow’s tendencies as we speak: learn extra, subscribe to our e-newsletter, and turn into a part of the NextTech neighborhood at NextTech-news.com
