Bring Bitcoin as close as possible to a consumer’s everyday financial experience and you increase its acceptance in society, Lolli cofounder and CEO Alex Adelman said.
Lolli is a rewards app that gives you Bitcoin for shopping at more than 1,000 brands including eBay, Microsoft, Staples and Nike. The value of the percentage rebate depends on the company involved but on a recent visit brands were offering as much as 24 per cent rebates in Bitcoin.
Mr. Adelman started Lolli with a great foundation. In 2011 the future Lolli team developed an e-commerce gateway and were acquired by a customer who was then acquired by Rakuten. That provided Mr Adelman with an extensive network of businesses to approach with his new idea.
Participating in Bitcoin was hard if you weren’t a miner or investor back in 2013 when he started, Mr. Adelman said, and that made it difficult to grow its utility. Their idea was to bring Bitcoin as close to the payment loop as possible and ultimately make it a currency. Seamlessly inject it into the buying experience and you improve its convenience.
But there is also a mind shift required, Mr. Adelman noted. People don’t usually think of using something they’ve mined or invested in for daily commerce. Even more know little if anything about cryptocurrencies.
So they needed a way to introduce people to crypto without having to educate them or change behaviors. Looking to their past partnership experience the Lolli team looked to shopping and rewards as the way. It’s worked, as more than 1,000 brands have signed on. For many it’s their first experience with cryptocurrency.
In three years more than 300,000 users have earned a total of $3.5 million in Bitcoin. They tend to be in the 18-35 range and are 70 per cent male. The 30 per cent female use rate is significant because in the early days only four per cent of cryptocurrency users were female.
“We’re making Bitcoin more accessible to all and so far the data shows that,” Mr. Adelman said.
He conceded some merchants were hesitant about participating with Bitcoin, but most of that trepidation disappeared once they saw how easy it was. Lolli does the remittances and related work, leaving little for the merchant to worry about.
“They get new customers coming in the door and they’re loyal to them because they’re a Bitcoin-friendly merchant and they’re giving Bitcoin rewards,” Mr. Adelman said. “So they’ve found they can build loyalty in their user base by giving Bitcoin.”
Merchants have different options when deciding what reward to offer, Mr. Adelman said. They can offer a consistent percentage and raise that for limited-time offers. Whichever method they choose, they have engaged customers as users enjoy checking their wallets to see how their holdings are doing.
Mr. Adelman is also excited about Lolli’s new mobile capability which he said was the most requested feature. While shoppers still mostly buy large ticket items from their desktops, more and more people are using their phones.
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