Ukheshe and Gratifii partnership marries payments and rewards solutions for powerful embedded finance
Fintech enablement partner Ukheshe continues to execute on its ongoing partnership agreement with enterprise loyalty and rewards company Gratifii.
The agreement gives both organisations and their clients access to industry-leading payments solutions as well as a loyalty rewards platform, explains Pieter de Wet, President of Business Development International at Ukheshe. “Integrating Gratifii’s Mosaic loyalty platform into our Eclipse payment orchestration platform has given our existing and future customers added value, by allowing them to offer their own customers a loyalty programme. This programme can be added seamlessly to card payments – with no additional cards required, and no additional steps.”
Partnerships like this have the potential to be game-changing, says Mark Schoombie, Gratifii’s Chief Technology Officer. “Current payment and loyalty industries have a somewhat narrow focus where finance technology focuses on payments, while loyalty companies focus on driving loyalty. But the loyalty market needs payment technology to create strong data and recommendations, while loyalty programmes in the payments arena drives more payments. Gratifii is proving that loyalty programmes can drive greater revenues, increased basket size, and increased monthly visits. The combination of these two worlds is a powerful play in digital transformation and shared economies.”
Clients of Ukheshe and Gratifii who will use the Eclipse and Mosaic technology to offer embedded finance solutions and loyalty rewards to their own customers, will not only benefit from this added value, but also the combination of two world-class platforms with state-of-the-art technology. They won’t have the stress of planning integration timings with multiple teams, with all those added costs, to fulfil their requirements. “Loyalty programmes in the past have been hard to understand and difficult to execute because of the rate of change,” says Schoombie. “Mosaic prides itself on flexibility and configurability. Changing rules in the system takes seconds, giving our clients the ability to test, try and change without cost. It also allows for targeting specifications, based on segments, tiers, customer preferences, transactional behaviours, and more. We provide a cost-effective solution that is simple to use, simple to implement and simple to adjust without long development lead times or cost.”
Ukheshe’s Eclipse platform, too, has been providing embedded finance before the term even existed, offering non-financial companies ways to integrate payments, transactions, transfers and other digital solutions into their businesses in a seamless way, without the associated development and compliance costs. “Essentially, our platform lets our clients offer banking as a service at lower costs and with less hassle, all through a single platform,” says De Wet. “Many APIs only provide one set of APIs per fintech proposition, whereas Eclipse provides a number of restful APIs – meaning multiple payment solutions through a single-entry point. Our clients only have to integrate once and can then access a number of services and build their offering to their own clients from there, such as digital KYC and onboarding, the opportunity to access issuing and acquiring services such as physical and virtual cards, QR and VAS – all within a single integration and location.”
Importantly, such partnerships create a truly shared economy, because the end consumer also benefits from safe, convenient financial services and now, loyalty rewards – ultimately adding value to the user experience. “Ukheshe’s vision is to change the financial landscape by making true financial inclusion a reality. And offering these benefits to our customers and the end consumer is another step in that direction,” says De Wet.