Welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty, an industry podcast for loyalty marketing professionals. I’m your host, Paula Thomas. And if you work in Loyalty Marketing, join me every week to learn the latest ideas from loyalty specialists around the world.
This show is brought to you by the Loyalty and Awards Conference, the leading annual event for loyalty professionals in the travel industry. Make sure to join us this year. From the 10th to the 12th of October in Madrid, for the perfect mix of inspiring content and exciting awards, check out loyaltyandawards.com for more information and to register.
Hello and welcome to episode 270 of Let’s Talk Loyalty. Today we’re having an interesting conversation about an innovative crypto-based reward option, which is focused on loyalty programs in the travel and hospital city sector. Flycoin is a new tradable digital currency which can be used to reward member with an asset they control, offering a truly Web 3.0 approach to driving customer loyalty. Joining me today to discuss this is Lenny Moon CEO of Flycoin. So whether you’re a crypto fan, a crypto skeptic, or like me, just trying to understand the potential for cryptocurrencies in our industry, please do enjoy today’s conversation.
Paula: So, Lenny, welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty.
Lenny: Thank you. Paula.
Paula: It’s super exciting to have you here. Lenny. I know you’re working in one of the most innovative, exciting, and perhaps misunderstood areas of loyalty. And I think you’re creatin some very exciting new ideas for all of us listening. So I’ll be very excited to get into talking about Flycoin as a company and FLY as a currency But before we get into exactly your business and what you’re doing, please do tell me, of course, what is your favorite loyalty program?
Lenny: What is my favorite loyalty program? You know, when I look at loyalty programs, I think I want to choose something that is something that I engage with on an everyday basis. And that’s really my Starbucks loyalty program, because when I look at that program, it’s very convenient and it’s easy to pay via the app. And I think anything that’s just easy for the customer is something that really creates a lot of the day to day engagement. So it’s convenient. It’s also very simple. There’s nothing too complex about the brand itself. But also the frequency of engagement. It’s something that I use once, maybe two times a day. Sure. And so it’s convenience. It’s I engage with it with quite a bit of frequency and very simple. And also the reward ratio in terms of how much the percentage of how much is provided back and what we want is relatively high compared to other programs. And I think the math of it turns out to be around 8%. And so that’s a very generous program, as well. And so given that, I do engage with it frequently and I do spend quite a bit, I think it’s one of those programs that I would say is my favorite in terms of the innovation. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily high innovation, but it’s something that I would consider my favorite program.
Paula: For sure. And I think you’re right in terms of the program, I don’t think it’s leading with an innovation proposition, dare I say. I think you’re absolutely right. They’re leading with simplicity. They’re leading with the the generosity of the overall program. And again, we do have a version of it here in the Middle East, which isn’t obviously nearly as mature or as developed there as there in the U.S. where you are. But I know for anybody who’s got their card on file, essentially in the Starbucks app, it’s just almost like, you know, you’re fully committed to the Starbucks brand because for me, you know, it’s the same in any sector. For example, whether it’s Uber or whatever. Once I’ve given the card over and made that decision, then the charging is eliminated
as a point of friction, I guess. And I think we all know that Starbucks is almost at a banking level,
levels of cash in terms of the amount of, you know, prepayments that it enjoys. And I guess it’s a high margin business as well, Lenny. So 8%, you’re absolutely right, is fabulously generous. And I don’t have a lot of kind of reward rates, kind of off the top of my head. But I do think Boots in the U.K. would be considered very generous at 4%. So there you go. Starbucks is double it.
Lenny: Well, actually, and also the margins of the core product itself is already high margins. So totally you afford to also give fairly high percentage back.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. And one thing that I must do at some point, I know Starbucks have announced a lot of initiatives in the whole Web 3.0 space. And given that we’re here today to talk about crypto and Flycoin, you know, in the crypto space and I definitely want to explore a bit more because you’re definitely not the first person to say that Starbucks is their favorite loyalty program. Lenny.
Lenny: And I’m not that original.
Paula: Oh, well, not to worry, consistency also works. It means that something we do need to pay attention to. So listen to me. Um, Flycoin is, as we said, a very innovative and very young company, dar I say it at the moment. And so before we get into the company and its overall business model and you know, I’d love to just get a sense of your kind of background and career. You are the CEO of Flycoin. As we said in the introduction but tell us a bit about what you did before you joined this space.
Lenny: Yeah, I would say that if you had to kind of categorize my background, it’s in three major categories one is startups. I’ve been in various startups throughout, I would say the past two decades. So even the three background bubbled. So that gives me some experience and also some history. And my first startup was actually a something funded startup about 20 years ago. Wow. And then the other category is Wall Street. I was actually a mergers and acquisitions investment banker in New York for about six, six and a half years. And in the major firms where I did large cap tech media and telecom mergers and acquisitions. And then the third bucket, um, within related to the startup spaces, FinTech. OK, where I started in the FinTech space when it was relatively early about 2012, 2013 where when you said that the word FinTech, you actually got quite a few questions. What is FinTech? Oh, wow. And now it’s obviously more of a come in commonly used term because it’s an industry that has, you know, developed quite a bit and matured. Sure. But I spent three years and an earlier pioneered in FinTech company from 2013 to 2016 where we were one of the earlier consumer lending platforms. So my background doesn’t hit loyalty directly, but it hits the general financial and FinTech in the startup space. And I think if you look at not just travel rewards but crypto together, if you kind of really think about what travel rewards is, people do see it as some sort of asset with financial value, right? For sure. And for the past three or four decades, there hasn’t been any meaningful movement toward converting it to a digital coin in any way. And so I would say more recently and and then if you look at the cryptocurrency space in general, it is converging to I would say the FinTech space or just the general financial space because people view it in different ways and they interact with crypto in different ways, but for the most part they interact with it also as a financial asset. So you have these two very, I’d say, similar concepts converging together, which are then moving toward the larger financial services, fintech space. And I think a lot of the companies out
there are going to be, you know, approaching their initial entry into crypto in different ways. But a lot of them are eventually going to mature into a company that engages with the customer in a different way. And I think that what we plan on doing in with Flycoin and I’ll talk a little bit of background further on this dialog is it’s not just a company that is focused on travel rewards in cryptocurrency, but we’re going to be engaging with the customer with a reward, with an asset that has actual value to it and outside value that they can mark, and then at that point engage with them in a different way. And I think in a progression we’re previously when you just interact with the rewards, you see it as a point and we see as a potential redemption option just for a product or for a discounted airline ticket or a free airline ticket. But I think that this provides the vehicle to interact with it in many more ways.
Paula: Absolutely. Well, thank you for that, Lenny. Yes. I think your fintech background is extremely relevant and gives you a much greater understanding of the crypto space. Certainly than I would have. And in my view, most people listening to our conversation today are probably, dare I say, crypto curious. I don’t know if that’s a thing but I’m guessing we all are. And I remember telling you actually that the last time or the only time I suppose I looked at crypto was when I did move to Dubai here in 2017, and I asked somebody if you would help me buy some Bitcoin. And I nearly fell off the chair when I was told it was $6,000 at the time. And what’s it trading at now? Do you have any sense, do you follow Bitcoin itself?
Lenny: Yeah, yeah I do. It’s, it’s probably right around 23,000 or so. It’s done up and down with value and I think it was getting closer to 65, 70,000, but it’s, you know, the disruption in the crypto market is not crypto specific right now. I think my stock regular stock portfolio is probably down more than my crypto portfolio. OK, and I think it’s obviously just with various market dynamics, especially, you know, speaking from the U.S. perspective with what’s going on with inflation and so on.
Paula: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, very challenging times for sure. So given this context and again, we have a global audience, Lenny, that are listenin and certainly the US is our top audience, the wheels of plenty people in Asia and certainly here in the Middle East and all over the world, of course, by nature of being a podcast. So given this curiosity I do believe that, you know, loyalty rewards are going to evolve of course, and in lots of different ways. And crypto is one very interesting idea.I know you’re coming to speak about Flycoin, specifically in the Loyalty and Awards Conference actually in Madrid, and to start talking to some of the travel loyalty
professionals there. But for everyone listening today what’s the kind of idea and I suppose background of Flycoin as a company and as a platform.
Lenny: So Flycoin is, I would say more broadly a travel tech company. OK, A travel rewards company where what we are doing is we have minted our own token for flying, which is the reward that corporate partners, whether you’re a hotel, an airline, just a general travel tourism company, your customers can now earn either in parallel with your current rewards program or in lieu of your current reward, and especially if you do not currently have rewards program And so what that provide is that provides your customers something that’s different that I wouldn’t say has been really provided previously or in the current kind of status quo environment, because right now the way Rewards has worked is the issuer controls varies is aspects of your rewards, right? They control the expiration of the rewards, control conversion transfer ability, and they also control the redemption option. So when it’s time to redeem your points, whether it’s an airline points or hotel points, they limit your options in doing so. And there’s various reasons to do that, especially from a company perspective. Sure. And I think in the larger travel
hospitality space, there are different companies with different rewards program. And depending on the size, the breadth and scope of your customer base, some of that makes sense. But what we are doing with Flycoin and the FLY, the token is as you earn it, you now earn a reward as a customer, as an end user that you own. And what that means is because you own it, then you do not have to worry about the issue of controlling the expiration, right? You have a freedom to transfer it to any other individual to any other entity in the way that you want. But also once we are tradable on the centralized exchanges and that’s also what we’re moving toward, it also has a cash value so as you earn it, you now have the full freedom optionality to use and redeem in any way that you choose, which is an option that is in your model totally. But it also means it provides you the freedom that you don’t have to hit any certain thresholds within. You know, you don’t have to wait. So you have 5000 points or 25,000 points as you earn it, you own it. And then you now have the freedom and the flexibility to redeem and, and trade or cash in the way that you want or redeem when I mean redeem. It’s also redeeming with the other corporate partners that also accept FLY. And so what it does as a as a customer, it provides you a lot more options. And so I would say more customer centric. But as a company, as a corporate partner that’s now issuing this reward, what it does is it provides that different level of customer engagement and excitement around a reward that is actually more meaningful. Right. As you know, in the travel reward space, there are some of the larger players that have very robust programs and that’s tied in with a lot of different elements credit card spend, elite status and so on. But not every hotel, not every airline has those sorts of programs and so there also is, I would say, a big, wide space of companies that either do not have means or rewards programs, both on the corporate side as well as meaningful for the customer. And the FLY provides an option to have a unifying currency and for each of those companies to also be part of a larger kind of alliance, but not necessarily a formal alliance, and therefore providing more value and more meaning for the actual end customer. The other thing that we’re doing as a company is we understand that as we are providing this this token, this reward that their customers can now earn and distribute to their customers, and we’re providing the technological know how to help integrate that within their current platform because we understand that the word cryptocurrency, it’s sometimes be a scary word. Sure. That maybe causes a lot of companies pause and so what we’re doing is with our engineering team, also with our understanding of regulatory issues, we’re providing crypto as a service in terms of the integration on how to do that. Now, the companies still control the marketing. they still control how they can think about elite status But we’re providing a lot more of the back end infrastructure and the know how. So they’ve been more comfortable integrating that into either their rewards program or spinning up a new standalone program, especially if they currently do not have one instance mm.
Paula: Yeah, wonderful. So I definitely get the consumer proposition. Lenny, we just had a show recently or an episode recently talking about Web 3.0. And you know, it really is all about the creator economy and giving consumers control. So where web 2.0 is, of course has been all around, you know, giant social media platforms, for example, controlling our data, monetizing our data without just benefiting I do, you know, really start to, I suppose, appreciate, particularly as a creator myself, that there is much more value that I can create and control of the assets that belong to me, whether it is my data or whatever it might be. So the way you’ve described it,
it sounds to me almost as simple, and I hope I’m not oversimplifying, but it sounds almost as simple as putting cash in another account for, you know, a new bank account for a consumer you know, if they have FLY and you know, I know it’s early days obviously for you guys is, yet. And in terms of what they can do with their FLY, but clearly that’s going to grow hopefully exponentially for you, but it’s us. Is that fair on the consumer side to say it’s kind of like cash in the bank if it has that level of flexibility, tradability and lack of exploration is what you see. It’s comparable to cash in some ways.
Lenny: Yeah, that’s definitely one aspect of it because on the user they can always convert it to their local currency. OK, and that’s what it provides them. And it’s actually OK to oversimplify because it really is simple because if you just take a step back with the rewards industry, especially the travel rewards space, people have already assigned a value to it mentally in some ways, right? So they say, OK, if there’s 25,000 points, I’m so used to redeeming it for a free ticket, right? And that ticket is worth this much to my currency and my local currency. The idea of moving it and converting it to a digital point. Right, and I’m specifically using the word digital coin. So the word cryptocurrency doesn’t scare people, but I’m living into a digital coin. All it does is it provides now a vehicle where the customer owns it and they do have the freedom to actually redeem it. Trade it for cash do you mean for any of the partners? But I think what’s also interesting is when you have it’s something with wrapped around being a digital coin or a cryptocurrency, as you continue to grow that ecosystem, you can also think of creative ways where everybody benefits. So for example, if a customer were to fly on this airline to this location, stayed at a hotel, these are all different companies and then book a book, a tour with another company that’s in our ecosystem we can also work together to provide incentives where they can earn a premium to their rewards by, you know, partnering or booking with respective partners in our ecosystem within the Flycoin ecosystem. And what the customer benefits from is without paying anything additional, they’ve now earned a reward that really does give them full optionality right now for certain companies, especially maybe ones that are larger or have more robust programs. The reason why I mentioned the word paradigm shift is this may cause some companies to be concerned because a lot of them don’t necessarily want their customers
to leave their ecosystem. Sure. Once they earn a reward. And like I said, there’s various reasons, and that has to do with, I would say maybe the just current mentality about rewards. It also has to do a little bit with the accounting of it, right? Because they have to maintain a liability on their balance sheet and in order for them to relieve that liability, they need to retain back their,
you know, with that platform. But it also is the concept of if we want to reward loyalty, by in a way, bring them back to our own ecosystem. Yeah, of course, yeah. And obviously that makes sense for various reasons. But I think that if you look at consumer trends, and especially if you’re a company that is forward thinking and maybe does not have a very robust rewards program, if you provide that end customer more optionality or you provide them a reward or a product that’s more customer centric. Mm hmm. I think you’re going to have a natural movement toward that better product that provides them more freedom in what they do. And that’s why I think that when you look at the overall travel space, there’s going to be initial companies that will adopt what we are doing. And then there are others that are going to have more of a wait and see attitude, which is completely fine, because I think that always within changes or movements within an industry, you’re going to have early adopters that have more to gain, less to lose. Sure. And then eventually you have those trends of larger companies that have waited for it to be more established and mature for various reasons. Whether it’s regulatory compliance or whether it is just board mandates, you know, or they have public shareholders and they need to kind of really justify any major movement and you know, if you to look at some of the more recent disruptions in the travel space, look at Airbnb and VRBO, I’m sure that initially when they were in their infancy and their concept stage, they weren’t looked at as a serious threat within the hotel industry. Sure. But they created a market they created the technology to enable and bring a new sort of industry where it provided more and better options. Mm. Hmm. To the end customer. And then eventually as they grew and they received critical mass, then the rest of the industry took note and followed.
Paula: For sure. For sure. And I am curious, Lenny, you know, for for big brands listening, for example, clearly, as you said, plenty of them have you know, more to lose, I guess, you know, by considering something like this. But but let’s say they did have, you know, this idea of trying something innovative, like like working with Flycoin. So for a large established loyalty program with a currency that’s well understood, well valued and again, we’re talking specifically in the travel and hospitality space. What are the implications of deciding to work with Flycoin? Because, for example, I know you’ve talked to me before about, you know, obviously if the asset is transferring immediately to the consumer, there is a whole different way of managing liability in that there is no liability to manage, for example. But what are the issues that those big brands
and program owners would need to be thinking about if they’re considering working
with a cryptocurrency like FLY?
Lenny: And that’s a very good question. I think for some of the big brand owners, the implications of working with Flycoin in terms of the positive website is having a stronger and closer pulse to what the customer actually wants, right? Yeah. Currently loyalty rewards programs for the larger players there. It’s also a financial engineering tool, right? It’s a way to raise that debt within capital markets. And there are more complex relationships with financial institutions and credit cards, right? So I think that there’s a there’s a reason there’s a function why some of those programs exist and cater to their customer base. But I think that there’s also room to look at your wider customer base and understand that rewards programs for the larger players really caters to, I’d say, the more frequent travelers, business travelers. What about the other 70, 60% or maybe even higher 80% of those that aren’t really engaging into the rewards program. So maybe there’s a way to bifurcate that and appeal to kind of where they really want to go with their rewards. And so the implications I think in a good way, if you think about it, would be well, let’s test it out. We’re not going to completely replace our rewards program, but maybe we can have an opt in strategy just like in some ways you can earn miles or points by flying with a partner airline. Why not provide the option for your customers to opt in to maybe in lieu of this current the current rewards program, have them earn, FLY and understand and get a pulse of what is going on with a customer base that isn’t super tied in to status and to spend and to credit cards. And I think what they may see is there are people that are going to be opting in because what that allows is that provides those customers that maybe do not hit those thresholds or flying frequently to have reward that they actually care about. Now, I’m going to still explore the financial engineering side because the reason why companies also like to expire miles, is when they get to relieve the liability on their balance sheet and then they get a nice income statement and PNL benefit hit. Right. And there’s a lot of CFOs that like to play that game, right? Yeah. I’m actually appealing to what’s also interesting for the customer is they’re kind of a thought to actually address those customer needs and not think about necessary the financial engineering of the managing of the liability. Because what happens in this scenario is you actually do not have a liability when you distribute the reward to your customer. In this scenario, it’s owned by the customer, and therefore there’s no more liability, at least for that part to handle on their balance sheet. And what it also does is when somebody redeems back on that platform, let’s say this airline or this little company also allowed redemption, then they are able to receive that token, which also can be tradable. You know, for cash. now I’m excluding kind of all the different questions that come up from a regulatory compliance perspective. I think that those are separate matters, and that’s a whole nother podcast. Totally. But just looking at the concept of what it could provide, I think that, you know, these are things that larger companies, once they can work, they will need to think about the negative implications are some of these things like what does it mean from a regulatory aspect? What does it mean to doing anything closer to cryptocurrency? Yeah. How will customers accept or think about, you know, a reward that is now a cryptocurrency that could potentially have some sort of floating value, and that’s why I think for the larger companies, it’s have to be a phased approach and let them let their customers decide who would want to opt in. Right. It’s not going to be an all and replacement. Yeah, but I think if we’re to jump ahead to three or four years we’re not going to be the only ones doing this. I think right now we’re the only ones doing this where we’re allowing kind of an open ended ecosystem
where on both sides and as many partners join our ecosystem and then also have the redemption option for the end customer be anything that they want, whether it’s with the partners, whether it’s be tradable. I think what you see in the current space right now is even if there is the word cryptocurrency incorporated it’s still only saying, OK, you can only earn if you work with this platform and we’re not going to make it openly tradable. I don’t really think that that fulfills the purpose of what cryptocurrency allows in the broader space.
Paula: For sure. For sure. And yes, I’m sure consumers will start to demand it. And I also think, though, for the big brand managers and program owners, there’s a considerable amount of work required, obviously, to educate people around, you know, exactly what this new proposition could look like. So I do think you make a lot of sense when you talk about a phased approach and it reminded me that actually we didn’t talk about where the original idea came from and your lead investor in terms of, you know, understanding, I guess the crypto space going back, I think longer than anyone else I’ve spoken to. So I’d love you to share this just about where this whole kind of business concept came from.
Lenny: Yeah, so our lead investor is a gentleman named Josh Jones, a successful tech entrepreneur. He actually started his first web hosting company in the mid-ninetieswhen he was still in college. I mean, wow. And for those that are in the web hosting in space. the company founded was company called Dream Host, which is fairly well known, and then fast forward to 2010 I think. when you look at players in this space, if somebody says they’ve been in crypto since 20, 17, you know, they kind of take some pride that it’s so they’re one of the originals. But Josh is somebody that was actually mining Bitcoin in 2010 because in 2010 you actually couldn’t buy it, you had to mine it in order to receive it. And you know he probably started mining for various reasons but my sense is he also had I think a philosophical alignment to the purpose of Bitcoin and, and if you speak to him, he would say that he had thought of versions of Bitcoin in terms of how to more efficiently transfer the unit from one entity to another. In a decentralized fashion. So I think that he was philosophical and I’m very interested in it. So anyway, he started mining between 2010 and then in 2012 he actually created one. The first Bitcoin exchanges because he’s a tech entrepreneur and also a computer programmer. So he had the technical ability and the know how to kind of put this together and, and so the idea of moving travel rewards to cryptocurrency, I’m sure has been in his mind in various iterations probably every couple of years since 2010. And so when he seeded the idea for Flycoin it wasn’t necessarily a new idea. I think it was an idea that had been kind of moving around and for quite a while. And so Flycoin was founded in 2021. We created the legal entity in October of 2021 and then we closed our $32 million seed round in January of 2022. Wow. And so I think that’s what makes this also exciting is we have I would say as a lead investor and he’s also very involved in the technological aspects of that as well. OK. On a, on a day to day basis we have that deep history that know-how and that that understanding of cryptocurrency and what’s also kind of interesting about this is travel rewards. If you were to ask a lot of cryptocurrency experts or people states travel rewards is usually within, I would say the top five, what’s the perfect use case? Yeah, right. Yeah. We are not some technological, algorithmically driven token like a Bitcoin or Ethereum. Right. OK, we are not a mean coin and we are not, you know, one of those coins that’s referred to, you know, in a more I would say disparaging way as a hit coin. Right. And know what we are is essentially all we’ve done in the most simplest way is we, as I mentioned before, converting rewards. The concept which has already been considered a pseudo currency in people’s mind into the vehicle of a digital coin. So it’s not it’s not a huge leap forward in terms of psychological understanding. Sure. But we use the word cryptocurrency because that’s what it is, right? It’s on the blockchain. And it not only provides clear ownership, but it’s also public. And so it’s something that something that makes it very transparent to those that own it. Right. And that’s when I got to the issue of control. That’s not the issue. It doesn’t control anymore. Once you tell how it expires, how you transfer it. And I think that that sort of freedom is also not just beneficial, but psychologically something that I think consumers are going to be happier about as well.
Paula: And dare I say it, brands are going to be scared off. I think exactly the way social media terrified everybody that people could publicly criticize comments and all of the, you know, learning curves in terms of, you know, how that fitted in with the brand’s strategy, communication strategy, you know, this losing control or ceding control to the members. As you said, there’s there’s lots of things to to be thought through. But I do think there is that inevitability about it. So I certainly think you guys have a great understanding. Again, going back to Josh Jones if he was mining Bitcoin in 2010 and I think it’s before most of us probably even heard of Bitcoin certainly I hadn’t so and so I love that credibility. So so still very young obviously Lenny and as you said, you know, less than a year old. What kind of brands are you working with? And again across whether it’s airlines, hotels or I know you have one city partner as well. So tell us a bit about some of the partners that you’re starting to work with.
Lenny: Yeah, let me mention the ones that we’ve announced publicly. Sure. And so we have we’ve already onboarded Ravn Alaska. And Ravn Alaska is a regional airline headquartered in Anchorage that just serves the state of Alaska. And so they only fly to cities and some of the outskirt cities within Alaska, and we have onboarded them and we continue to, I would say, enhance the products with them. OK, so currently I don’t know what the latest number is, but it’s over 250,000 customers of Ravn, Alaska have actually already started running flights there. Now, many of them may not actually know that they’ve earned cryptocurrency, OK, because they can interact with it as a reward. But that’s actually I think one of the great things of what we’re doing is we are not expecting nor do we want and customers to feel that they need to be crypto savvy. OK, we don’t want the partners to expect that their customers need to be crypto savvy. OK? What we how we want to position ourselves is, look, your customers will earn cryptocurrency, but they can still engagements and as a regular reward. But as the industry matures, as consumers, I would say mature in the space. We want to help educate and bring them on this journey. So when it’s time to interact with in a more crypto savvy way, we can provide the product, the educational tools to bring them along that journey. Right. And naturally, I think certain customers will still want to interact with it as a reward, as a non cryptocurrency others may actually want to say, Hey, I want to understand what this whole cryptocurrency digital coin is, and that’s what we want to do. So they are one partner that is already onboarded. Thanks Again is an airport loyalty program. We announced that partnership more than a few months back and they are for loyalty program where if you spend within the just in the US right now at about I think it’s 120 to 130 US airports, both major and minor airports regional airports. What as a user you can now do is you can still earn the Thanks Again reward point, but you can also opt in and earn FLY in lieu of that. And we’re in the process of fully onboarding. Thanks again as well. You mentioned a city partner. We announced very interesting partnership with the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation. They are the non nonprofit entity affiliated with the City of Anchorage. And their mission is to help spur commerce and new business initiatives within the city. Now the first thought might be why is a city interested in being a partner with FLY? Well, when you look at it, Anchorage is actually heavily dependent on travel and tourism as well. So it fits within the larger travel, hospitality space. And the reason why they were interested in this partnership and we were also interested in this partnership, is they grow another aspect of our ecosystem. So for example, given that they’re dependent on travel, travel and tourism, we can help incentivize us through our larger ecosystem of hotel and airline partners that when you fly into the city of Anchorage and let’s say you spend at the restaurant or you buy items at a at a retail location, you can earn a premium, a FLY, you know, for spending. And what that does is that helps bring in additional cash for that city and more spend the city. And we can even put together interesting partnerships that you fly within a certain airline into Anchorage or you stay within a hotel. You earn multipliers for that. And so we are currently in process of those creative discussions. And how so? And then a very interesting partnership that we announced. I would say more recently it’s a company called Prizeout. Now, they are not a loyalty program. They’re Mark Cuban back. Who Mark Cuban with Dallas Mavs, He is an entrepreneurism, He is on Shark Tank. Yeah. But what this provides for the FLY ecosystem is it provides another interesting way to redeem the FLY that you have in your account, right? So for example, current redemptions options are you could redeem with a partner, redeem whether it’s a ticket, eventually a hotel room. You can trade eventually for cash but what this does is price up. They put together a brand new platform where you can actually redeem your FLY for a gift card with any of the top merchants and there’s certain expand those partnerships globally. But it’s not just a regular gift card. You get a premium for whatever dollar amount that you want to withdraw from. So, for example, it’s such an example, I’m gonna use the US dollars. Let’s say you want to redeem $20 of FLY instead of just having $20 in cash, you will then have a suite of options to redeem maybe $25 with Home Depot, which is another US company or $22 with Starbucks, I’m making up these numbers. I don’t know for sure our hands on your profile. Yeah, but what it does is it gives you an additional premium for whatever you’ve earned. So in a wonderful kind of great scenario you could have earned FLY maybe win it was of some value and potentially that value went up and now it’s worth even more and then when you redeem the prize out, then you earn an additional premium on top of that. And so I mentioned that partnership because what that does is that just provides additional utility, right? For the end users, the FLY and the host grow the larger ecosystem of what we are creating. So those are some of the recent partnerships. What we’ve also done on the infrastructure side is we’re very focused on compliance, security, and we’ve announced partnerships with two established top shelf, what they call crypto custodians. They protect the crypto assets that we are holding as a company. And so we’ve announced partnership with BitGo. as well as a company called Anchorage Digital and Anchorage Digital coincidentally, it has no relationship with actually the city of Anchorage. OK, so even though we have two partnerships, one with actually the affiliate and nonprofit entity with the city of Anchorage and Anchorage Digital is actually headquartered in San Francisco. OK, but we want to give our corporate partners and our customers security. That is a company Flycoin. We are taking the proper measures that crypto assets are properly secured so those are some of the partnerships we’ve announced. I know you want to just maybe talking about the airline hotel partners, but we also have other partnerships that I think are important to what we’re building. And then we have other exciting ones in the pipeline that I can’t mention right now. But then they are in the hotel `airline and travel tourism space.
Paula: Sure, sure. Well, thank you for all of those. And as I said earlier, we will be together, please gods in October in Madrid. And I know you’re speaking on the Loyalty and Awards, one of the panel discussions there. So hopefully by that time you’ll be able to share some more of the latest kind of partnerships coming through and again, how the whole kind of program is performing. So I think that’s all the questions, Lenny I had from my side. Am is there anything else you wanted to mention before we wrap up?
Lenny: No. Other than thank you so much, Paula, for having me on your podcast. I enjoyed the conversation and so look forward to meeting in Madrid.
Paula: Absolutely. Well Thank you for helping educate me about some of the principles and reasons why this is something that’s important to be thinking about because that was my overall objective. So with that said Lenny Moon, CEO of Flycoin, thank you so much from Let’s Talk Loyalty.
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