The Loyalty Podcast
Newscast 3 – US credit card regulation impact and Apple loyalty.
(upbeat music) - This loyalty newscast is brought to you by Niax Coinbridge, turning loyalty into currency, instantly, spendable at any shop worldwide. (upbeat music) - Hello everyone, I'm Katie Topping, and this is your loyalty newscast for the week of July the 8th. In this week's episode, we'll discuss the impact of the recently scuttled swipe fee lawsuit settlement in the US. We'll pass the US Justice Department's anti-competitive lawsuit against Apple by asking a panel of Apple customers if their loyalty to the brand is coerced. And we'll join the loyalty round table for a discussion of credit card interchange regulation around the globe. Plus, we'll take a look at the data and bring you another episode of sponsor love. All this and more this week on the loyalty newscast. And now to start things off, here's Rick Ferguson with this week's News Headlines. - Hello all you beautiful people out there. This is Rick Ferguson, and these are your loyalty headlines for the week of July 8th, 2024. Our top story out of the US this week is the rejection by a federal judge of the proposed $30 billion settlement between Visa, MasterCard, and merchant groups to reduce credit card interchange fees. The judge's decision requires both sides to hammer out a new deal or head to trial. We'll have full coverage of this fast moving news story in this episode. In Canada, venerable coalition loyalty program air miles is enjoying a rebirth thanks to a brand relaunch and a host of new benefits for collectors, including new redemption options, card linked offers, and tier benefit updates. Now, air miles is more than just a loyalty program. For decades, it was part of the fabric of Canadian life as ubiquitous as Canadian tire or Tim Horton coffee. That's before a series of missteps and sponsors fleeing and its parent company into bankruptcy. We'll be rooting for the program's new owner, the Bank of Montreal, as they relaunch air miles for a new generation of collectors. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, US-based beauty retailer Sephora has rolled out its My Sephora loyalty program across the UK as it embarks on the next phase of its business. My Sephora has often held up as a gold standard in retail loyalty and will be excited to see how the company's British customers respond to the scheme. These are your loyalty news headlines and if you have a new story you'd like us to cover, hit me up on LinkedIn or at rick@loyaltywired.com. Just last week, a US federal judge rejected a $30 billion settlement that would have limited the swipe fees charged to merchants by Visa and Mastercard. The deal would have ended nearly 20 years of legal battles over swipe fees. Now the two sides must renegotiate or head to trial. Shortly before this latest news broke, Rick Ferguson spoke with loyalty-wired correspondent Mark Berman on the impact of the proposed settlement. We're airing this segment as recorded and we'll continue to keep you appraised of this developing story. Here's Rick. Joining me today is Mark Berman, CEO of the Mallet Group and our resident financial loyalty analyst. Welcome to the loyalty newscast, Mark. Rick, it's a pleasure to be back and thank you for having me. Well, let's dive right in. According to the settlement announced a few weeks ago, Visa and Mastercard have agreed to cap credit interchange fees, I believe until 2030. Companies must negotiate the fees with merchant buying groups and the law firm that negotiated the settlement estimates that merchants will save around $30 billion in swipe fees. If that's true, is this deal a clear win for retailers? I think it's a mixed bag. Just let me give you some context. In 2023, credit card payments by merchants to the credit card companies was about $72 billion. So $30 billion settlement over five years and that's the extent of the settlement. It represents about 2% I think of profits. And so it's something but it's not earth shattering and I don't think it's going to make a heck of a lot of difference. I think the optics are good, but I don't know if the reality is really going to pay off. And again, this settlement does not require merchants to pass the savings along to their customers. Do you anticipate that they will or they're just going to pocket it? No, I don't think that they will. You know, given inflation, et cetera, I think merchants will use that money to make up that differential and lower their own settlement, you know, their own interchange fees. And what they agreed to is to lower it to change by 4-bits, you know, 0.04% for three years and then cap rates at current levels for five years. That is, it's something, but it's not, as I said, earth shattering. And the other part of the settlement was removing an anti-steering positions by merchants, meaning that merchants can steer consumers to less costly processors. And as you know, Visa and MasterCard, along with their airline partners in particular, they've painted a pretty dire picture about the impact of swipe fee reductions on reward credit cards. So now that the two networks have agreed to this temporary cap, do you envision any short-term impact of this settlement on rewards credit cards? No, I believe the consensus is there's no material impact. It's a small amount. It potentially could undermine the value of rewards slightly, but only for a few years. Rates are going to be held stable. I don't think anything in the short term. Longer term, possibly, if the CCA goes through and interchange rates are material-affected. And that certainly could have an impact on rewards. But for the short term, I say, no, I don't think there's any impact at all. Yeah, and particularly, since you mentioned the Credit Card Competition Act, that's the bill that seeks to introduce more payment competition and break up the so-called Visa and MasterCard duopoly. Senator Dick Durbin is one of the co-sponsors of the bill. He called the settlement a temporary concession and vows to push the bill even harder. The conventional wisdom is that CCCA was facing a tough road to passage, even before the settlement. Does this news make the bill's passage even less likely? Or is there still the possibility that Congress might act? Yeah, I think that that has taken a back seat. I don't see it rolling through Congress. Not that much rolls through Congress smoothly these days anyway. Yes, your quote of a temporary concession is exactly what Dick Durbin was positioning to be able to push the CCCA through. But it remains to be seen if that's going to get any significant traction. I think this could have been, you know, sort of just giving people a little bit. And he wants a lot more. But I think that that is going to be a big fight about whether fundamentally interchange has to change in this country. As it has in other countries, as we've talked about before, but I don't see it really materially impacting things in the short term. Sounds like there is going to be some short term impact in terms of savings for merchants. They may or may not pass any of those savings along to their customers. Obviously loyalty marketers are going to continue to pay attention to this news. What are your most important takeaways either on the retail side or the credit side? Yeah, so for loyalty marketers, just keep doing what you're doing. Your contracts with your issuers, you know, sort of mandate, how many bips you're going to get and how you fund your rewards. I don't see it really being fundamentally changing anything in the short term and probably the medium term as well. For consumers, my best advice is spend your points. Reward costs go up and you get less for more. And that's never a good thing on the consumer side. So spend your points, use them now. Don't delay because they're just going to get devalued over the long term. And I will certainly be spending my points taking that advice myself. And as a settlement must still be approved by federal court, there may yet be additional wrinkles to the story. And we will certainly have you back on Mark to discuss them. Thanks again. And we look forward to hearing more from you again soon. Rick, it's my pleasure and I will be following this closely. Thanks for having me. MUSIC Coming off the high street of their recent worldwide developers conference, Apple must now face the reality of a US Justice Department lawsuit accusing the company of anti-competitive practices. The government claims that Apple fans are not loyal because they love the iPhone and the Apple Watch, but rather because they're trapped within the Apple World Garden. Is Apple's vaunted product ecosystem merely a gilded cage? To answer this question, Rick Ferguson talked not with loyalty experts, but rather with actual Apple customers in a new recurring segment we're calling Into the Wild. Conversations with your customers. And now, here's Rick. With me today is Jill McBride, a PR executive and owner of the grown-up dish lifestyle blog, hailing from Denver, Colorado. Welcome, Jill. Thank you. And also we have with us, Jay Gilbert. Dare I say legendary radio broadcaster and magazine columnist from Cincinnati, Ohio. Welcome to the program, Jay. Glad to be here. Thank you. Jill, I think I know you all enough to know that you now have multiple Apple products in your portfolio. Yeah, I don't have the VR glasses, but I have almost everything and multiple iterations of everything. I also owned a company for 20 years and had an entirely Apple office. Outside of maybe the design world is a bit of a rarity, right? So it sounds like, Jay, if we talk about your life in the current Apple ecosystem or Wald Garden, whatever you want to call it, you may be leaning a little bit more towards the disgruntled side at this point rather than just a happy loyal Apple customer. I don't think I lean. I think I fell over. I'm pretty angry. I still use mostly Apple products, but I feel kind of trapped. Jill, how about you? Where are you in the Apple ecosystem right now? I'm going to be completely contrary. So I am quite happy within the Apple ecosystem. So in terms of whether you feel trapped inside the Wald Garden or whether you're feeling like your loyalty is in any way coerced, the example might be when you talk about banking loyalty, we can look like a loyal customer to a bank and we're really not. We're very disgruntled with them, but it's very hard to switch your banking relationship so we all just live with it. And what you're saying is, in terms of your life with Apple, you don't feel that way. You're happy and loyal inside that Wald Garden. I'm pretty happy. I would say the thing that aggravates me the most is when the charging ports change or the fact that every time I get a new phone, I have to get a new case because they move the camera one millimeter. And I'm like, great, I'm going to go buy another $100 case. I'm also a big fan of progress and of things getting incrementally better. And that means that some stuff's going to have to change. So I just suck it up. Jay, it sounds like you're not exactly happy inside the Apple Wald Garden. Well, my background is in radio and audio. So a lot of my life in recording studios and stuff like that. And sound quality is very important to me. And so when the iPhone came out, when I would record stuff, I didn't use their microphone. I would plug in an external microphone so it would sound better because they used to have an earphone port, which was also an input port that disappeared a few years ago. And that was disastrous for people like me. That's one of the criticisms that gets leveled at Apple pretty regularly, right? Is that like the charging ports or getting rid of the headphone jack or making it more difficult for you, Jay? They tend to just kind of make those decisions and then just assume that all of their customers are going to follow along. And we kind of do because a, we don't have any choice. And b, in Joel's case, you're relatively happy overall. And Jay, you're disgruntled, but you're going to stick with it. Let me just add one thing. The only reason that phones and other Apple products are switching over to the USB-C connector instead of what they call the lightning connectors is because the European Union forced them to do that. And so they're doing it now in America. And that's kind of what this current lawsuit is about also. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I wanted to just touch briefly on where you guys think subscriptions fit into your loyalty to Apple. They offer a lot of different types of subscriptions, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple News. Are you guys users of any of that stuff? And does that contribute to your experience? I have Apple TV because I like it. And it's one of the many TV streaming services we subscribe to. I also pay for data. I got to pay for data somewhere, right? I have huge files. I have tons of videos. So I'm going to pay somebody for data. So I'm paying Apple for data. I have a shared plan with my husband $10 a month or something. And I just-- I know that it's going to be for the rest of my life. Right, that's very true. And as we wrap up on the amount of time that we have, I wanted to just end by asking-- I'll start with you, Jill-- being a happy Apple loyalist inside the wall of garden. You're very content there. Is there anything that would make you consider switching away from Apple? Trying a competitor's product? I get tempted. I see some of these newer-- I mean, Apple used to be so far ahead on the cell phone in the cell phone world. And now, honestly, every time a new phone comes out, the basic headline is, yeah, it's kind of like the last one, but the camera's better. That's basically the value prop on the new phones. And I see some of these other phones that do some kind of whiz bang stuff. And I am tempted on the phone side. I don't think I'm ever going to be tempted on the computer side. My worst nightmare is at this late age of my life, somebody's going to make me work on a PC. Interesting. And Jay, last word for you being somewhat disgruntled about your Apple experience. Is there anything that Apple could do to kind of smooth that relationship out and bring you back into the fold, so to speak? Maybe. There was a time 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I was one of those obnoxious Apple people. And I would be one of these, do this evangelistic thing about how great Apple is. And I'm not that way anymore. And I'm not the opposite. Otherwise, I would actually get rid of them. But it's like what you said about changing your bank. It would be such a hassle to do that. I'm not sure what Apple could do except to accept more of its competitors' universes. And that's not to say that the competitors aren't the same way. They are. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, they all try to trap you inside their world. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now it's time for "Spons and Love." Our chance to sit down with the companies and loyalty experts, who make this podcast possible. Hi. Today I'm joined by Guy Rosenhois, CEO of Coinbridge by Nax, sponsor of this episode of "The Lord's Newscast." So today I'd like to talk about the bad bear of my life within loyalty, especially with retail loyalty, where up till now, I'm going to have a look at it. Within loyalty, especially with retail loyalty, where up till now, redemption has largely been through gift card, where the customer experience is, someone wants to redeem points at the point of sale. They take their card, they then redeem by creating a gift card, which is either a-- if they scan a QR code or a barcode. I can see you smiling, Guy, a QR code or a barcode at the point of sale. Why do we still do this in 2024 and what's your view on gift card redemption these days? Well, I think we do that. I wouldn't say we because we do not do that. But all the world is doing that because of legacy systems. I mean, if you want to really build a gift card network as a brand, you need to integrate your platforms, whatever platforms you have, to other point of sale systems, with other merchants and so on and so forth. And this creates a bulky experience. Our problem is that in order to match the payment mechanism to the rewards that the consumer has or the balance the consumer has, you need to take the consumer through a funding process or a card loading process. So if you have certain points that are worth a certain amount, you need to load that amount on the card. So the systems on the business side, on your merchant side, will actually know how to deal with that. So you have a bulky experience in that one. And by the way, to create that network, it includes lengthy integrations, extremely expensive. Also, the loading of points value, or gift card value onto those cards, also bears a cost. And the reason, if you're asking why we're using it, because I think the loyalty industry, especially the big brands, are not really open to change yet. I mean, you can see certain brands that have actually started making the change. But they're feeling comfortable with the current solutions. And they have invested in the last 15 to 20 or 25 years tons of money in that. And they have all of those integrations and agreements and so on. And suddenly, to say, we're going to drop all of that in order to provide a different experience, which actually will make their life easier. It's a big decision. Sometimes it's an ego-related decision. It's also a very separate decision. So to change your payment system and your point of sale system for a retailer is like a heart and lung transplant. So how are they going to do that with a lot? If you look at brands, you can see that you have those champions that really understand the change and really understand that the new generation, you know, the big consumer generation today is Generation Z. They are now the consumers. They have the money, they've grown up now. You can see champions within brands that understand that you need the change. But if you go back to IT and to all of those guys, manage systems, they're actually preventing the change in that respect. But imagine that if you could come to those guys and say, you don't actually need to change your payment systems. You don't need to do anything. All you need to do is to integrate a bit of software into your loyalty app. And then you take this closed loop and open it to the world. I think one of the things that we do, we're not changing the systems. We're telling them ditch or gradually ditch your legacy systems, implement our solution, and there's no real change anymore. I mean, from that moment, you get what you want. You get ample of choice. Your consumers will be able to redeem anywhere at any shop under your control. You can restrict. And also the user experience will change from loading a card to tapping a card or to reading a QR code or to scanning a barcode or a QR code and so on, to basically just getting into the shop, understanding how much money, how much value you have in your rewards, tapping and paying. And you don't have to do anything to make this change. We take care of everything. It opens a door to those brands to make the change. Because up to now, they had to integrate to new systems. Now they don't need to do anything. They implement a simple SDK, API connection, and they conserve the new generation needs. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, everyone. This is Rick Ferguson with a look at the data, the numbers and stats most critical to understanding customer loyalty. Today, we're taking a bite out of the Big Apple. That's Cupertino, not New York City. One of the key pillars of the US Justice Department's lawsuit against Apple's alleged anti-competitive business practices is that Apple loyalty is coerced. That Apple's vaunted product ecosystem is less like a walled garden and more like the Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. But what do Apple customers say? We crunched a bunch of recent survey data from sources such as CNET, Apple Insider, Statista, and Cannellis, and found that contrary to the Justice Department, Apple users exhibit behaviors of customer loyalty experts' love, behaviors like cross-sell and retention. For example, according to Bloomberg, 80% of Apple's revenue comes from returning customers. The company has maintained a staggering 90% retention rate and 70% of their customers are part of the Apple ecosystem, meaning that they own multiple Apple products. As for subscription services, Apple Music boasts a 62% retention rate, while the Apple care warranty service boasts 70% renewals. But the company's secret weapon might be the Apple Wallet and Apple Pay. There are 638 million Apple Pay users globally and the service trails behind only PayPal and online transactions. While only 9% of Apple Pay users have used the service for in-store transactions, those numbers are expected to grow, particularly amongst Gen Z digital wallet users, over 70% of whom purchase with Apple Pay at least once a week, and that's compared to roughly 50% of millennials and Gen X users. In fact, Apple Pay's global payment volume is second only to visas, no wonder Apple doesn't want competing wallet apps on the phone. And that's our look at the data. We'll see you here next time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some double clicking to do. [MUSIC PLAYING] Another potential outcome of the US Interchange Settlement rejection is its potential to put pressure on US lawmakers to pass the Credit Card Compensation Act, a bill designed to increase competition in the US credit card market and end the Visa Mastercard duopoly. To understand the potential impact of this bill's passage, Rick Ferguson convened a panel of experts for a new recurring feature we're calling the Loyalty Round Table. Let's listen in as our panel discusses lessons learned from interchange regulation in other parts of the world. Welcome, everybody, to our first-ever Loyalty Round Table. What we hope will become a regular feature of the Loyalty Newscast. I'd like to welcome, first off, my partner in crime, Ian Pringle, host of the Loyalty Podcast. Hi, Rick. Thanks for inviting me. And we also have with us Phil Rubin, legendary figure in the Loyalty Market industry here in the US, CEO of Gray Space Matters. Welcome, Phil. Thank you, Rick. I'm trying to say this with a straight face after that introduction. It's great to be here. And finally, another legendary figure in the Loyalty Market industry in Europe and beyond, Alan Elias. Welcome, Alan. Hi, Rick. Hi, gents. Lovely to be here. Kind of get us into our discussion. I wanted to share a little anecdote. So I'm actually speaking to the three of you from a hotel in New York City. And this was kind of a last-minute trip for me. My wife was coming here for a business trip. She said, would you like to come? And I said, sure. So we redeemed 40,000 Delta Sky Miles for my ticket, so the ticket was free. Because of Alison's status with Delta, she was able to get upgraded to business class. So I got to sit with her in business class and enjoy my Bloody Mary. Then we arrived in New York, went to our boutique hotel on the Lower East Side, which is a Marriott property. So we got upgraded to a suite. And because of all of the perks associated with being members of these programs, we had a lot of extra discretionary income, which we have been able to spend in New York City bars and restaurants. So I guess my question to kick things off, maybe I'll start with you, Phil, given the obviously demonstrably positive impact that these programs have had, why mess with them? - It's politic. The problem for loyalty is that credit cards fund an enormous amount of the profits and the funding for loyalty, especially, I mean, using your example of your trip to New York, the credit cards, like just the airlines alone, are worth literally billions of dollars a year to each of those carriers. And while those, you know, we're starting to see the airlines make some changes, taking out those billions of dollars is gonna be a real challenge. And the reality is from everything that I've read and the research I've done, the issuing bank CEOs are not gonna get on earnings calls, blame their shortfall on the regulation. That's not gonna satisfy their shareholders. They're gonna figure out other ways to charge fees and create new, incrementally profitable alternatives to replace their earnings per share. But it's not gonna be good for loyalty. It's not necessarily gonna be good for consumers at all. - Yeah, but it's not an existential threat, though. You know, we've seen it happen in Australia. We've seen it happen in Europe. This is, we know what's gonna happen. It's just gonna make it more competitive. And everything that you had, Rick, you can still do, right? All the frequent flyer programs still exist in Europe. They still exist in Australia. They're just less, as Phil says, they're just less generous. - Alan, maybe you can talk about what Ian said in a little bit more detail, right? So obviously that interchange fees were capped in Australia. I think about 10 years ago, right, or longer. And obviously they've been lower in the UK and in Europe for a while. When those interchange fees were capped, were there any serious economic impacts? Did all the issuers just adjust and carry on? Has Ian suggested, or if this bill were to pass in the US, what might we expect based on what you've seen in other markets? - Yeah, I mean, in the UK, interchange income, the blended interchange income, the most issuers or airlines were enjoying as part of the interchange part, went from circa 80, 90 basis points to 30 basis points. So it was a 65% hit on interchange income, which was the core income of the programme. So on first view, it was, oh my God, this is terminal. However, we were lucky enough. We had already built a sensible back book of business. And even though, as we know, these products aren't around, aren't necessarily built on revolve economics. And when you are in market a long period of time, the back book of revolve does become material and meaningful. And the great thing about car portfolios is even though the percentage of borrowings are low for airline portfolio, because the spend is so high and the debt is so low, a function of the creditworthiness of typical airline co-brand carriers, there was some mitigation around effectively the bank sharing some of that. And when you know this happened across Europe, starting to look at how you use these products to encourage customers to start to borrow, even if it's short-term borrowing, given how high the spreads were. So there was a sort of immediate, I guess, reallocation of revenues. You'll see much higher fees now for those customers that want to spend and collect on a fee-based card in the UK. And the other things that the business together looked at, and I guess what it did, it brought the banks closer together to the airline. And it was an existential threat initially. It was all about giving the customer a better deal. So reducing effectively merchant pricing to the customer. All that happened is that the merchant acquire has kept all the money. - But if I could pick up on something you said there as well, Alan, I'm a geologist, right? And I studied all this all evolution. And if you consider interchanges a mass extinction, there was a mass extinction of loyalty events. It's just that the frequent fires came creeping out of the swamp, right? They managed to survive as ferns and birds coming out of this mass extinction. But all the charity cards went, all the supermarket cards went, all the brand cards went. They were all destroyed by this event. But because you guys understood the P&L and understood where the money was coming from, they could survive that catastrophic hit. - Yeah, and the ironic thing is that, if you look at this bill, and I've not literally read the entire bill because life is too short, but I have read summaries of it, and they aren't even attempting to cap interchange. All they're attempting to do is provide a little bit of competition to the Visa MasterCard duopoly by saying your card acceptance has to allow for an additional network to come on board and compete, basically. And no one's even really said what networks might compete. So although the airlines and the big banks are presenting this as an existential threat, there isn't even really an interchange cap. So whether this bill would even have the impact that its sponsors think it would, I think is an open question. What's your opinion about that bill? - No, well, I agree. And it's not clear that this bill is likely to even pass, much like a lot of the others. And I think that's some of the difference that we see from a regulatory standpoint here versus other parts of the world. But they're intent and their positioning is, this is for the benefit of merchants, but it's really the big box merchants. And so when you factor it all together, markets are efficient, resources will be reallocated if this happens. And all the players will figure out other ways, like raising fees for other things to make up for the gap. - And I think that's the biggest irony of the whole thing that we've seen in Australia and New Zealand is in taking, in reducing, in the government of reducing interchange, you reduce the incentive to compete with these brands. And I think it's been, I mean, Alan, they also brought in open banking in Europe. And if I think of anything, it slowed down that because interchange isn't there as an incentive for these brands to undercut it. Because if you've got interchange sitting at 30 basis points, where's the incentive in that? If it was sitting at 800 basis points, then you'd have every incentive for someone to come in and open banking and even create alternative loyalty plays out of this. But it hasn't happened. The customers didn't get a benefit. The merchant acquirers kept the money. - And so did the networks. The networks came up with new whizzy ways of making money. And because the merchants were up, the fact they could have been up a lot more, but the acquirers took some creatively, the networks, Moscow, these are added all sorts of new fees to start to make up the threshold. But no, so it's interesting to see in the US how much, as I mentioned already, how much of the lessons that can be pointed to in Europe, how much of those will apply. And indeed, whether Delta will be, if assuming Delta is looking to save money on merchant fees, or certainly the Visa MasterCard fees, and it's American, which is ironic, 'cause I don't know what it's planning to do with this American Express franchise. I mean, my Express paid them gazillions and billions of dollars a year as we know. I'm sure there's gonna be a kind of a carve out for American Express somewhere on the line, as there was in Europe for proprietary cards. And so it'd be interesting to see how it goes, but even the networks, even if something happens, the networks are so clever, even if they get clobbered on legislation, a week later, they'll have some workaround that add fees somewhere else to people like Delta. And you're right, the small guy probably end up getting clobbered the most. - I think on a recent earnings call, Delta CEO mentioned that 1% of US GDP flows through the American Express Delta Sky Miles cards, billions and billions of dollars flowing through those products. I love Ian's metaphor of an extinction level events, if this were to pass in it. Obviously that happened in the UK and Australia and some players will not make it and the strong will survive. (upbeat music) Next time on the loyalty newscast, our loyalty world tour continues is Ian Pringle heads down under to explore the changing loyalty landscape in New Zealand. That led to the demise of that country's flyby's loyalty coalition. Here's a sneak preview. - Does that go to partners that are non owners as well? So that honesty has to be extended to people that haven't got a vested interest in the success of the program? - Absolutely, because ultimately, if you go into a coalition, you have to believe that you are going to drive more value from this collaborative platform than you are from going in alone. Then we'll journey to Asia PAC to explore the rise of the zero consumer with Matthew Quint, director for the center of global brand leadership at Columbia Business School and we'll unpack recent comments by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky about the wisdom and efficacy of an Airbnb loyalty program. All this and more on episode four of the loyalty newscast powered by loyalty wired. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - And that wraps up another edition of the loyalty newscast. I'm Katie Topping. On behalf of Rick Ferguson and Ian Pringle, we'd like to thank you for listening. If you like the loyalty newscast, please tell your colleagues. You can reach us on LinkedIn and on the web at loyaltywired.com. So until next time, do good work and stay in touch. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]