Worth mentioning, perhaps, that the biggest players in the airline loyalty programs are credit card companies. If you go back to when Aeroplan was a public company, you’ll see that CIBC and later TD was the largest buyer of “points” / contributor of revenue to Aeroplan. The real loyalty scheme is to induce Aeroplan cardholders to use their TD Aeroplan credit card over others. A hole rathole of data / privacy issues to explore here... On the other hand, is a loyalty scheme centered around credit cards (which make the same interchange regardless of where you use them) less anti-competitive than loyalty programs that give preferential treatment to certain brands / retailers over others?
Worth mentioning, perhaps, that the biggest players in the airline loyalty programs are credit card companies. If you go back to when Aeroplan was a public company, you’ll see that CIBC and later TD was the largest buyer of “points” / contributor of revenue to Aeroplan. The real loyalty scheme is to induce Aeroplan cardholders to use their TD Aeroplan credit card over others. A hole rathole of data / privacy issues to explore here... On the other hand, is a loyalty scheme centered around credit cards (which make the same interchange regardless of where you use them) less anti-competitive than loyalty programs that give preferential treatment to certain brands / retailers over others?