Universal Reward Protocol Review

What is Universal Reward Protocol?

It is a blockchain-based protocol where retailers can reward shoppers for multiple behaviors like simply visiting the store. By accepting to share their shopping data with the network, a shopper earns reward tokens, while the data is used by retailers to build redemption offers that best suit each customer’s needs. Shoppers can then redeem their tokens through these exclusive and personalized offers.

Blockchain-based protocol, which allows retailers to reward consumers for any type of shopping behavior from visiting a store to making a purchase or simply sharing their location, released its first Reward Program Survey, revealing what consumers value most about retail reward programs, how they would like them to improve, and how much personal information they’re willing to share for better shopping experiences.
Universal Reward Protocol, which provides a unique ecosystem for all retailers to reward their customers for any type of shopping behavior, and for sharing the corresponding Proof-of-Behavior data with the retailer. Retailers offer URP tokens as an incentive for shoppers to interact along a desired behavior, and use the collected data to tailor personalized offers through which the shoppers redeem their tokens.

What is the goal of Universal Reward Protocol?
In-store activity to increase traffic and acquire new customers
• Social media analysis to reward brand influencers and shopper engagement
• Web 3.0 navigation to incentivize conversion in recurrent website visitors
• Supply chain integration to reward shopper participation in last-mile delivery
• Other use cases that will arise from the evolution of shopping behaviors worldwide

How does the Universal Reward Protocol system work?

While online retailers have leveraged data collection to thrive, physical retailers have lost steam in the race to understanding their shoppers’ preferences. Retailers have hence directed their strategy towards achieving omnicanality, to engage with their shoppers both online and offline.

By accepting to share their shopping behavior data with the network, a shopper earns reward
URP tokens, while the data is used by retailers to build redemption offers that best suit each customer’s needs. Shoppers can redeem their tokens through these exclusive and personalized offers.

Shoppers, in exchange, are rewarded for their engagement with universal tokens they can redeem through personalized offers and promotions. They have complete control over which data they share with which retailer or brand , according to the trade-off between the level of personalization they are looking for and the privacy settings they choose.

Universal Reward Protocol is a blockchain-based protocol that serves as the overarching infrastructure for decentralized applications (dApps) that analyze shopping behavior. Using smart contracts, retailers define behavioral conditions to be fulfilled by shoppers to earn a reward : the Proof-of-Behavior (PoB). Each dApp on URP defines a set of behaviors it is able to certify by producing PoB.

Universal Reward Protocol is competing with traditional rewarding programs applications like Shopkick and analytics solutions made for retailers like RetailNext. As for NucleusVision, its product enables retailers to reward shoppers who visited their store and shared data with the store manager. Universal Reward Protocol is different by nature. It’s a rewarding protocol while Nucleus Vision is a dApp.

The distributed ledger technology (DLT) inherent immutability can be problematic in the context of personal data, since any personal data stored on the blockchain can never be erased, and encrypting the data doesn’t really solve this as the encryption needs to not only be secure today but also decades from now. This is why URP will not store the Proof-of-Behavior data on-chain. However, it seems that storing the shopper’s consent for each campaign on-chain gives strong transparency garantees to users and privacy regulators.

Upon presentation of the PoB to the smart contract, the shopper is rewarded and receives tokens. The collected data is then sent to retailers to tailor personalized and exclusive offers to shoppers. Finally, shoppers can redeem earned tokens through these deals.

Data fusion algorithms link anonymous in-store shopper data with their purchase history collected at the register, using artificial intelligence and probabilistic models. Raw signals collected by the sensors are first contextualized using mapping data, to outline a visit to a specific product category, and this high-level interpretable data is in turn fused with other sources of shopping data, such as receipts or web cookies, to form a shopper data profile that can be checked against any reward or redemption contract. Occi dApp is the first in-store solution that confronts real-time shopper data with their actual purchases. It has been the cornerstone of a software that provides retailers and brands with highly interpretable shopping path data containing which product categories a shopper visited, along with purchase information.

A dApp like Occi can be used as a Proof-of-Behavior in this Protocol to reward in-store activity using the IoT and AI technology build and installed with some of the largest retailers worldwide.

An existing dApp called Occi will be integrated with Universal Reward Protocol. Occi can produce Proof-of-Behavior regarding in-store activity, using a combination of IoT and AI technologies.

What Does the Universal Reward Protocol Token Do?
The URP token is a generic ERC20 utility token and has a dual function:
Retailers will distribute URP tokens to reward shoppers based on rules of their own choosing.
Shoppers, on the other hand, will redeem these URP tokens in exchange for discounts, gifts or
premium services. The URP token will be used as incentive for all stakeholders to behave correctly, preventing fraud and securing the network.

The URP token is the incentive retailers use to encourage desired behaviors in their shoppers. It is redeemable across all retailers in the network, which makes it a universal reward, and brings direct value to shoppers already saturated with retailer-specific captive rewards. The URP token is also used as an incentive system for stakeholders in the reward network to behave as intended.

Once all mandatory fields are populated, the campaign is translated into a reward smart contract which is deployed on the blockchain , and the reserved amount of URP tokens is put in escrow. Once a contract is published, shoppers susceptible to fulfill it are notified. The interface also provides the retailer with an analytics dashboard displaying the state and performance of active and past reward campaigns , including the amount of URP tokens distributed, the number of individual triggers and shopper profiles concerned, as well as revenue and uplift generated.

Under URP, shoppers will interact with a single component: the Profile Manager. Shoppers interact with the Profile Manager component directly on their mobile device. The Profile Manager has four main objectives:
• to allow the shopper to check the balance of their wallet in URP tokens at any time
• to update the list of currently available reward and redemption campaigns
• to collect the consent to each campaign the shopper wishes to participate in
• to monitor and curate their privacy settings with respect to each retailer

Shoppers can finally enjoy all the benefits of a fully customized, omni-channel customer universal reward program, portable across all their favorite retailers. All with each customer’s privacy as a priority, and with the full transparency of blockchain technology.

As a conclusion:

URP enables retailers to tailor targeted offers to their shoppers and incentivize their behavior and data sharing by providing straightforward campaign creation and monitoring tools . The two following sub-section details in depth the roles of the Reward Campaign Manager and the Redemption Campaign Manager .