Incent Community Update
The “Incident” & its aftermath
So, before I kick off I want to state that I can’t share any hard facts as the lawsuit is still on-going. Actually, I don’t even want to talk about “the incident” but solely focus on the aftermath and my view on how the story (hopefully) pans out.
So The lawsuite is the "incident" that we won't talk about, or is the lawsuit because of "it"? I'm just wondering if you can tell us more about the lawsuit, if only who sues who? I must admit I haven't read any of the other hundred or so pages before so maybe I just missed it when it all happened. Happy to receive a link so I can read up on it, too. If not then it's fine aswell.
The Incent team
First things first, we are going to update the team section on our homepage within the next couple of days; the old, outdated team picture has already been removed.
Do you guys have enough funds to pull through? How high is your burn rate and could you onboard even more ppl if necessary? Are they getting enough time to relax/ vacation?
The concept we have worked out during my time in Australia is a little different as we decided to include an Incent customer card. There are two QR-codes on the customer card – once a private key to scan and set up a user account, once a public key to have it scanned at the check-out and receive Incent. The intention for the MVP is that the merchant scans the QR-code of the customer either from the application or the Incent customer card, enters the billing amount and Incent get dispersed to the customer out of the merchant’s account. The percentage of Incent a merchant wants to give customers as cash-back is either defined in his profile or individually adapted per client through a slider (which overwrites the default settings). As we decided to not buy Incent in real-time from the secondary market, merchants have to hold Incent themselves. Basically, a merchant tops up his account in-app, distributes Incent to his customers until he starts running out of Incent and then tops up his balance again. In consequence, we are buying Incent in bulk from the market rather than buying back every single order individually.
You should make it super easy for the merchants to get the incent. A one-button activity, nothing complicated. Maybe even integrate an automatic top-up feature that they can set up. If they only have x% of incent left, they either get a reminder, or it will be bought automatically.
Our Trump
The most significant difference from our original plans is a natively implemented affiliate program. Whenever a user or merchant on-boards a new user (by sending out a referral link either over text or e-mail; phone-to-phone by reading their QR-code or by providing his Incent card to scan the QR-code), he is going to earn an affiliate payment on every transaction ever done by that user. This is made possible as we charge a percentage commission on each transaction issued using our application or as Rob calls it – “clip the ticket”. The ultimate goal is to have existing users and merchants on-board new customers, earning an affiliate commission on every transaction and therefore seeing their own balance increase in real-time.
This is a brilliant idea! Just make sure this is as anonymous as possible. This could be problematic from a privacy perspective. I wouldn't want my neighbour or whatever know how much I buy.
I’d like to add that each user, be it a merchant or a consumer, has an affiliate. The affiliate can be Incent Loyalty, a merchant which on-boarded a consumer or merchant to the program, or a consumer himself who on-boarded another consumer or merchant.
So if Incent on-boarded the user, Incent gets the 20% reward? Plus the 2.5% commission?
How can users on-board other users? Where would they get their card? Does one card work with all participating merchants?
Cyrille Wetter
Community Manager Incent Loyalty
Good job, well done flying over there and helping like that! It sure sounds like you're on the right track. Let's hope the tough times are soon over and they haven't taken too hard a toll on everybody, especially the team in Australia.