Incent Loyalty: 18 months on

The blockchain rewards system crowdfunded in October and November 2016, one of the first to hold a token sale on the Waves platform, and is set for mainstream integration next month.

Eighteen months ago the Incent Loyalty project was born after a successful token sale on the Waves platform. The blockchain rewards programme was one of the first initiatives to launch a token on the new Waves network, which itself had only recently launched mainnet after crowdfunding $16 million that summer.

‘Humble beginnings’

During its crowdsale, Incent collected around $1.1 million in BTC and WAVES at the time — a modest amount compared to more recent token sales.

‘Incent started from pretty humble beginnings,’ says CEO Rob Wilson, who has been active in the cryptocurrency space since 2013. ‘It was just a couple of us working part-time in a shared office. But we knew that there was a huge opportunity here. We’d learned from BitScan, our directory of bitcoin businesses, that merchants were hurting. Competition with the big online marketplaces is tough, and no conventional loyalty programme delivers returns. We knew we could offer something different, and that a blockchain currency was the way to do it.’

Incent’s solution is a form of loyalty points that are bought from the open market at point-of-sale, rather than being issued as IOUs, like traditional reward schemes. ‘It’s basic economics that if there’s a fixed supply and you’re expanding the ecosystem with greater merchant and consumer demand, your currency will be worth more in the long term,’ continues Wilson. ‘And because it’s hosted on a blockchain, customers have the freedom to do what they like with it — spend it, save it, give it away, sell it. The choice is theirs.’

Going live

The crypto landscape has changed markedly since 2016. Firstly, there is far greater regulatory clarity. Exchanges such as Bittrex, Incent’s primary trading platform, have undertaken an extensive process of vetting each coin listed to ensure it is compliant with the current requirements. Additionally, the meteoric rise of the cryptocurrency markets over the course of 2017 means that there is far more than $1.1 million in Incent’s war chest, even after 18 months of development costs and this year’s sharp downturn. The company has rented its own office space in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and now has 17 employees.

Incent launched in beta in January with a Chrome toolbar that pays users small amounts of Incent for browsing. This proof-of-concept was followed by their marketplace, which rewards customers with Incent for shopping with hundreds of different affiliate websites. ‘Full integration with our first local partners will happen at the end of July,’ states Wilson. The company has around 15 bricks-and-mortar businesses set to come on board, all of whom will issue Incent to customers in real-time as they pay. ‘Then in November, we’re looking at integration with a number of national Australian brands. We’re already inking those partnerships. If we pull it off, it will be a world first, putting crypto in the hands of thousands of mainstream consumers.’

For more information, or to sign up for the Incent marketplace, visit www.IncentLoyalty.com.