In 2022, The Fintech Times posed the question: ‘what sets a ‘fintech for good’ company apart from the rest?’. This year, we wanted to hear directly from global fintechs that align themselves with the ‘fintech for good’ ethos. Why do these companies perceive themselves as agents of positive change in the industry?
Jordan Glazier is the founder and CEO of Wildfire Systems, an enterprise platform that enables clients to offer cashback rewards and money-saving features, driving revenue, customer acquisition and retention while helping consumers save money.
Tell us about your company and what it does
Wildfire provides an enterprise-grade platform for white-label e-commerce rewards programs and shopping companions, enabling its clients – which include financial institutions (FIs), telecom leaders, and technology companies – to offer their customers cash back, digital coupons, and other benefits via desktop and mobile browser extensions when the customer shops at thousands of online merchants.
This can help Wildfire’s clients meet their customers wherever they are shopping and influence which payment method they choose, driving revenue, customer acquisition, and retention for our clients. It also supports customer acquisition and drives increased sales conversion rates for the merchants, while helping consumers save money. Our platform provides a win-win-win scenario for all parties.
One of our most notable partnerships to date is with Visa, which is integrating Wildfire’s consumer rewards features in order to extend these shopping rewards benefits to its card issuers to offer their end-user customers.
Why do you think your company is a ‘fintech for good’?
In today’s economy, with inflation and higher prices continuing to squeeze consumers when they purchase everyday items, they are increasingly turning to tools which help them save as much money as they can. And we have all witnessed the drastic shift to online shopping vs. in-store shopping, originally spurred from the global pandemic, with e-commerce sales this year projected to grow another 12 per cent, according to the NRF.
Against this backdrop, Wildfire’s white-label cashback rewards platform helps our clients deliver money-saving online shopping features to their customers. By offering features such as client-branded browser extensions which facilitate cashback rewards customers can earn for completed e-commerce purchases, as well as providing savings via coupons as the customer checks out, Wildfire is able to help its clients easily deliver value-adding features that help their customers save more money almost anywhere they shop online.
Offsetting the impacts of high prices by delivering these features through a free tool the customer installs once, is one way we operate as a fintech for good.
How do you measure your impact?
Wildfire measures our impact in terms of money saved by the end-user customers of our clients (consumers) who use our tools to find and apply coupons and to earn cashback for their online shopping.
Across all of our clients, Wildfire has enabled shoppers to earn more than $4million in cashback rewards for their online purchases in the first four months of 2023.
Our clients’ customers have also saved money using the coupons we help them find and apply in their shopping carts: from 1 January to 30 April 2023, people who applied digital coupons saved nearly $1million.
What more can be done to make finance more ethical, transparent and accessible?
To make finance more ethical, transparent, and accessible, one of the biggest opportunities is in educating the consumer themselves. Many consumers do not receive any formal training on basic financial concepts, budgeting, and investment strategies.
Financial companies should not only promote financial literacy and education to empower individuals so they have the knowledge and skills necessary to make informed financial decisions, they should also help to create and deliver the very tools which will help those customers be more informed, and to have access in the first place.
Ideally, these initiatives would include offering a robust, user-friendly mobile banking app, delivering personalised financial advice, reducing fees, preventing fraud, and helping consumers save money. Indeed, per J.D. Power’s 2023 U.S. Retail Banking Study, customers are carefully looking at what financial institutions can do for them in the areas of customised advice and personal financial management.
One Wildfire client helping consumers save money is Acorns, a financial services company specialising in micro-investing. Acorns uses Wildfire’s platform to help their customers invest cashback earnings into long-term savings plans with the goal to build generational wealth incrementally over time.
Image and article originally from thefintechtimes.com. Read the original article here.