Corporates typically incentivize their sales channel comprising distributors, dealers, retailers, and their own salesforce to target product-specific push or drive overall sales. There are various ways to pay out these incentives – bank account transfers, cash disbursement, discounts on additional sales, accumulation of reward or loyalty points reimbursable upon reaching a milestone, etc. However, each of these leaves a lot to be desired. For example,

1. maintaining and updating the account details of lakhs of retailers or salespeople is a cumbersome exercise and fraught with operational risks.
2. cash disbursement is expensive and poses a risk of theft, last-mile delivery is always a grey area and disbursement above a certain threshold are not permissible according to local laws.
3. while discounting features can help push your product, it may not always be in the best interests of your sales channel and therefore, not in your best interest. Supply build-up can lower the brand value of your product.
4. although reward or loyalty points do offer a competitive attribute to your incentive scheme and engage your sales channel initially, it can lose its sheen if the program is not regularly updated with newer schemes or offers. In short, you need a creative team regularly coming up with innovations.

What if there was an alternative that addresses all these concerns while allowing you an avenue to brand yourself, monetize the entire scheme, and much more? Enter Prepaid Cards. 

1. Easy to maintain: A General-Purpose-Reloadable (GPR) prepaid card can be issued once to an individual and can be reloaded as many times as desired till the expiry of the card or till the applicable limit is exhausted. You no longer need to maintain the bank account details of each channel partner or salesperson as any card-load transaction is just an API call away whereas funding is done into a single pool account.
2. Cash equivalent, but not so much: Yes, your channel partners are elated that they don’t have to play barter trade with you anymore (remember discount schemes or reward points that can be only availed on future sales?) and at the same time, they do not have to deal with physical cash.
3. Branding: One more potent opportunity to showcase your brand! The more cards that are issued, the better the visibility of your brand, and the higher the multiplier effect. 
4. Wider acceptability: By giving incentives on cards and not via discounts on future sales or reward points, you ensure wider acceptance of your incentive program with the desired audience, which ultimately helps drive more sales.
5. Instant gratification: In this digital era, enchant your channel partners by instantly issuing and activating physical or digital cards, and crediting incentives to their cards rather than relying on the traditional way of transfers. 
6. Compliant: A prepaid card is a regulated product issued by RBI-licensed entities – this ensures the heavy lifting of compliance is already taken care of. Besides, the data is hosted in a PCI-DSS-compliant environment, ensuring full data privacy for the cardholders.
7. Customize your program: Create a positive or negative list of merchants and categories where the card can be used. Place restrictions on the amount or count of transactions to avoid misuse – something that you, as a Corporate, cannot influence if the incentive is disbursed in cash or to a bank account. Allow cashback or discounts on your choice of merchants through a brand loyalty program.
8. Control with the user: A cardholder can view balances or statements, reset the PIN, switch on/off any transaction type, and set corresponding limits, and analyze spending.
9. Leverage the existing card network and its reward programs: By giving incentives on prepaid cards, you’re allowing the channel partner to choose how she would like to spend it across millions of merchants accepting cards and benefit from the network-run reward programs.
10. Financially inclusive: A simple yet effective way to contribute to the nation by easily bringing those in far-flung areas under the banking system.
11. Support: Ensure you tie up with a Bank or Technology Service Provider who can offer on-demand support to you or your cardholder in the language she desires.

At CARD91, we pride ourselves on being able to roll out sales incentive programs for corporates in less than 2 weeks! Yes, our API-first approach, deep understanding of supply chain programs, in-house technology & payment experts, and existing partnerships with banks and card networks allow us to offer any prepaid card solution in a simple, plug-and-play manner. Just sign us up, sit back, and witness the magic!

Given that you’ve reached here, it seems that you’re interested in launching a hassle-free and widely accepted loyalty scheme for your sales channel. Irrespective of your inclination or choice, do have a 30-minute free session with one of our supply chain and payment experts by writing to us at sales@card91.io. We will be pleased to share how we’ve helped several corporates successfully make the decision!

Written by Shailabh Kothari, Director – Partnerships & Sales