The field of the present disclosure relates generally to the use of payment cards by consumers or cardholders in the payments industry, and more particularly, to a payment card configured to receive and display loyalty program information on the payment card as part of an electronic payment transaction.
At least some known merchants accept electronic payment transactions as an alternative to cash for the payment for goods and services. In such electronic payment transactions, a payment card may be used. Examples of payment cards include credit cards, debit cards, charge cards, store-value cards, gift cards, and pre-paid cards, as well as other types of cards. Payment cards are uniquely tied to a consumer or cardholder account that is backed by a card-issuing lending institution or bank. These lending institutions may have loyalty programs that provide incentives to consumers or cardholders. These incentives are intended to improve revenue and profitability for lending institutions by giving their customers a reason to use their payment cards more frequently. With more transactions being processed, there is a greater chance for increased revenue for the issuer.
Loyalty programs typically consist of paying a percentage of a qualified sale back to the consumer or cardholder in the form of cash or non-cash units that are accumulated within each consumer's or cardholder's account. Consumers or cardholders can eventually redeem these incentives or may automatically receive a loyalty program reward, for example, as a credit on their cardholder account or through issuance of a separate pre-paid card to the cardholder. Examples of incentives include cash, points, airline miles, gift certificates, coupons, etc. that accrue on the consumer's or cardholder's account. Although loyalty programs themselves are designed to attract consumers to a specific payment card program, due to the wide variety of loyalty programs designed to attract consumers to a specific payment card program, additional incentives and/or features are desired in order to attract consumers to a payment card program and to maintain their usage of the payment card.
The ability to track and use these incentives is beneficial to the cardholder. For example, it is beneficial to a cardholder to be able to track and use points they have accumulated as part of their payment card usage. It would be beneficial to the cardholder to have a payment card configured to display the points, or other incentives, on a face of the payment card so that the cardholder knows how many points they have for usage with a payment transaction.