One real-time engine for every program mechanic
The ReactorCX loyalty engine is the core of the ReactorCX enterprise loyalty platform. It evaluates every transaction and every rule in a program, from a single member's earn at the pump to multi-brand reconciliation at the register, through one deterministic engine that handles currencies, earn and burn, tiers, expiry, promotions, discount arbitration and audit in real time.
Promotion
Overlapping offers · one answer
v6Who
Tier: Goldand fuel membersWhere
All channelspump, store, appWhen
Weekendsthrough the quarterWhat
Bonus on fuelpartner-fundedArbitration · three offers qualify, one applies
- Fuel bonus · brand-funded · stackable · applied
- Partner bounceback · partner-funded · excluded by stacking rule
- Tier multiplier · within cap · deferred to next qualifying earn
Funding split, stacking rule and cap enforced on every evaluation
How ReactorCX unifies earn, burn, promotions and audit in one engine
Member, segment and tier management. Benefits and eligibility. Currency and value systems. Real-time earn and burn. Promotion management. Audit trail. All in one engine, accessible through API, events, or batch.
Unlike legacy loyalty systems that split these functions across separate platforms requiring constant reconciliation, ReactorCX runs ≈ 4.2B transactions a year across retail, fuel, hospitality and financial services on a single real-time engine.
Member, segment and tier management
One profile per member, unified across brands, channels and accounts. Parallel tier systems and event-driven segments update in real time.
Benefits and eligibility
Benefits apply automatically at transaction time, evaluated against tier, segment and active promotion. Age-gated and compliance-bound rewards require verified eligibility before issuance.
Currency and value systems
Multiple currency types and point purses per brand, including holiday bonuses, property-specific currencies and partner-attributed points. Points tag at the source and track as sub-balances inside one unified member wallet.
Real-time earn and burn
Sub-second earn and redemption with instant balance updates and full reversal support. Mixed baskets reconcile at the line-item level for cross-brand attribution.
Promotion management
Hundreds of concurrent promotions execute without conflicts, governed by predictable rule order. Audience targeting, scheduling, stacking controls and budget caps configured at the rule level.
Audit trail
Every transaction, every rule execution, every configuration change logged with full lineage. Exportable records for finance, compliance and reconciliation.
How rules target who, where, when and what
Every rule in the ReactorCX loyalty engine is built on four dimensions of eligibility, supporting enterprise programs running hundreds of concurrent promotions without conflicts.
| Dimension | Examples |
|---|---|
| Who · member targeting | Auto-generated, CRM-defined or external segments; preview and early-access groups; test and control groups; age-verified segments; employee-only segments |
| Where · location targeting | Attribute-based location lists (zone, market, state, city); geo-lookup via mobile latitude/longitude; service-eligible zip codes; flagship locations only |
| When · time targeting | Effective and expiration dates; days of week; times of day; automatic time-zone conversion based on location |
| What · activity, product, offer targeting | Attribute-based product groups (category, department, age-verified); exclusions and suppressions; mandatory product groups; any captured action or non-transactional event |
| Financial guardrails · applied on top of every rule | Per-day, per-week and per-offer limits; count limits for the first N qualifying members; budget caps that auto-deactivate the offer when exhausted; cool-off periods |
Source: ReactorCX loyalty engine capabilities as published by Loyalty Methods.
Eleven mechanics run every program, in every industry
A fuel bounce-back, a grocery punch club, a hotel suite award and a card sign-up bonus look like different products. Underneath, they are a small set of mechanics with different scope, reward and funding. ReactorCX runs the mechanics; the industry supplies the vocabulary.
| Mechanic | What it covers | What is configured |
|---|---|---|
| Earn incentive | Base earn; flat or multiplied bonus; category, department and item bonuses; daypart and location bonuses; supplier-funded bonuses | Rate or multiplier · product, location and time scope · funding · caps |
| Threshold reward | Punch clubs (buy five, the sixth is free); spend gates; sign-up bonuses that pay out after qualifying spend; tier qualification runs on the same gate | Gate metric and unit · window · reward on crossing · reset rule |
| Stretch reward | Bracketed goals that pay more as spend or visits climb; requalification pushes near period end | Brackets · period · reward per bracket |
| Engagement goal | Missions and challenges across categories, channels or time; visit and category streaks with decay and rescue; non-purchase actions such as profile completion, check-in or review | Qualifying acts · sequence or count · decay and rescue · reward at milestone |
| Partner offer | Earn with a partner; burn at a partner; co-brand card earn; partner-funded bonuses billed at a contracted rate | Partner entity · direction · rate · funding and settlement |
| Behaviour-triggered offer | Lapse and win-back; first visit; category lapse; churn signal; high-value visit | Trigger condition · frequency cap · fulfilment · measurement window |
| Milestone reward | Birthday; account anniversary; tenure; relationship milestones | Milestone type · reward · once per period |
| Credit instrument | Vouchers; earn-window and spend-window vouchers; onboard credit; statement credit; free-item credits | Value · earn and spend windows · venue scope · refundability |
| Instant discount | Price reduction at the register; cents off per gallon at the pump; digital coupons; comps | Scope · value · channel · stacking rule |
| Entitlement benefit | Upgrades; lounge access; priority service; late checkout; suite and cabin awards that are inventory-constrained and confirmed on request | Eligibility · inventory constraint · request-and-confirm workflow · channel scope |
| Advocacy reward | Refer a friend with rewards to both sides; reviews; social actions | Trigger · bilateral rewards · caps |
Tier and status are a structural part of the program rather than a promotion, and run on the same threshold logic. Each industry page shows the five to seven expressions that industry runs most, mapped back to this table.
The detail your team will want to check
Expand what you need.
One configuration modelEight dimensions, whatever the mechanicEvery mechanic above is configured on the same eight dimensions. Four target the offer, which the table above this section describes. The other four decide what triggers it, what it pays, who pays for it and where it stops.
| Dimension | Same in every industry | What varies by industry |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | A purchase, a behavioural signal, a time event, a partner event or a service event starts the evaluation | Basket at the register, pump transaction, folio close, flown segment, posted card transaction, port-out signal |
| Who | Member, segment, tier, household, test and control groups | Household in grocery, plan type in telco, card product in banking, status track in airlines |
| What | Product, category, department, activity or offer scope | Item and private label, fuel grade, rate code, fare class, merchant category, cabin category |
| Where | Store, region, property, channel | Site owner, banner, property, route, online only |
| When | Dates, days, times, booking or earn windows, with local time zones | Daypart in convenience, weekly ad cycle in grocery, booking window in travel |
| Reward | Points, another currency, a discount, a credit, an entitlement or status, from the same purses and the same ledger | Cents off per gallon, miles and tier credit, onboard credit, statement credit, an upgrade |
| Funding | Operator, partner or co-funded split, recorded on every line the mechanic touches | Supplier, fuel brand, property owner, card issuer, onboard concession |
| Caps | Per transaction, per member per period, per program budget, per partner budget, enforced as the transaction runs | Per fill, per stay, per statement cycle, per sailing |
The four targeting dimensions are detailed in the table above. The architecture page covers how new fields extend the model.
Funding, stacking and caps are first-class, not settings
Most promotion mistakes are not about the offer. They are about who pays, what combines and where it stops. ReactorCX puts those three on the front of every mechanic and enforces them at the transaction, not at month end.
Funding source
Every mechanic names who pays: the operator, a partner, or a split. The funding follows every accrual and discount it produces into the ledger, so partner statements, banner liability and the finance export read the same lines. Partners and funding
Stacking and arbitration
Which mechanics combine and which exclude each other is a policy, applied across the whole basket at the transaction: best for customer, best for business, priority order or override. The section below shows how the arbitration engine resolves overlapping offers. Promotions and arbitration
Caps at every level
Per transaction, per member per period, per program budget and per partner budget apply at once and are enforced as the transaction runs, so a funded offer cannot overspend its budget and a member cannot exceed a limit between reconciliations.
Measurement from the start
Test and control groups are available on every mechanic, so lift is measured against members who did not receive the offer, and the promotion dashboards report incremental impact rather than participation. Analytics and intelligence
What marketers ask for, and what the engine runs
Marketers think in objectives, not rule configurations. The console works from the objective; this is the translation underneath.
| The ask | The mechanic | The configuration |
|---|---|---|
| "Drive morning coffee visits" | Earn incentive, daypart and category scoped | Bonus on the coffee category, six to ten in the morning, every store, capped once a day |
| "Bring back people we have not seen in a month" | Behaviour-triggered offer | Trigger on no activity for thirty days, one voucher, once per member per quarter, measured on ninety-day retention |
| "Get the supplier to pay for this one" | Any mechanic with a partner funding source | Funding set to the supplier at the agreed split, capped at their budget, attributed at the line |
| "Get members to try three new items" | Engagement goal | Three qualifying purchases from the new-item list within the month, reward at completion |
| "Make our best customers feel it" | Entitlement benefit | Top segment eligible, inventory-constrained upgrade, request-and-confirm, channel scoped |
| "Buy five, get one free" | Threshold reward | Quantity gate of five in the category, reward on crossing, counter resets on reward |
The same objectives in a hotel, an airline or a bank map to the same mechanics with a different scope and reward. That is the point.
Overlapping offers, one optimal answer
A single transaction can trigger dozens of overlapping offers. The ReactorCX engine evaluates every valid combination and returns the optimal allocation in subsecond time. Loyalty earning and promotional discounting are resolved in a single real-time call, not two separate systems stitched together after the fact.
- Native to the loyalty engine. Runs inside the same engine that handles earning, tiers and promotions.
- Optimal combination. Evaluates every valid combination for the mathematically best allocation.
- Multiple arbitration policies. Customer-first, business-first or vendor-protected logic.
- Full discount library. BOGO, mix-and-match, combo pricing, ticket-level and item-level discounts, cents-per-gallon rollbacks, percentage off, dollar off and package pricing.
- Transactional preview. Members see potential savings before completing the purchase.
Basket arrives
Items, member, location, channel, time
Eligible offers found
Who · Where · When · What evaluated for every offer
Arbitration
Every valid combination scored against the chosen policy
Optimal allocation returned
Discounts and earn resolved in one subsecond call
Bring your hardest promotion. We will model it.
Model your loyalty programReal-time earn and burn across every channel
- Instant or deferred earn. Earn with every purchase, interaction or engagement, or postpone earn to handle return policies or encourage return visits.
- Flexible redemptions. Variable burn rates, rewards with points, split pay and linked pay across all channels.
- Real-time notifications. Points earned, available rewards, promotions and pending expirations surfaced immediately.
- Omni-channel. Consistent earn and burn across mobile apps, kiosks, web properties and in-store terminals.
Multi-region, multi-currency at enterprise scale
- Multiple loyalty programs per instance for different brands, regions or divisions, with optional loyalty ID reuse.
- Foldering balances central program management with local promotion control.
- Local-currency rewards with real-time exchange-rate conversion.
- Unlimited currency types and point purses per brand; points tagged by source and tracked as sub-balances.
- Multi-brand mixed-basket resolution at line-item level for accurate brand-level P&L.
Proven across 35+ countries on Western Union's My WU program.
Expiration and non-transactional engagement
- Points expire after a set period, on a rolling basis, on a fixed calendar, or on inactivity, with reminders at configurable intervals.
- Tier validity periods with automatic upgrade and demotion against tier criteria.
- Referrals, event attendance, check-ins, reviews and social interactions rewarded through the same rule engine.
- Referral and enrollment bonuses with tiered rewards and two-sided activation.
Frequently asked questions
How does ReactorCX arbitration work when multiple offers apply to a single transaction?
A single transaction can trigger dozens of overlapping offers: BOGO deals, mix-and-match combos, vendor-funded promotions, and cents-per-gallon rollbacks. ReactorCX evaluates every valid combination mathematically and returns the optimal allocation in subsecond time. Arbitration policies are configurable: customer-first, business-first, or vendor-protected. Loyalty earning and promotional discounting resolve in a single real-time call.
How does point and tier expiration work, and can it be automated?
Expiration is fully configurable and automated. Points expire after a set period, on a rolling basis, on a fixed calendar schedule, or triggered by inactivity, and the platform handles enforcement without manual intervention. Tier validity works the same way, with notifications sent at configurable points ahead of expiration to prompt re-engagement. Managing expiration manually across millions of accounts is not operationally viable; ReactorCX makes it a configuration task.
How does ReactorCX handle multi-region and multi-currency programs?
Multiple loyalty programs can run within a single instance, each scoped to different brands, regions, or business divisions. Customers earn and redeem in their local currency with real-time exchange rates. Points can be tagged by source and tracked as sub-balances within a unified member balance, and mixed baskets resolve at line-item level for brand-level P&L.
Which promotion mechanics does ReactorCX support?
Eleven mechanics cover the promotions programs run in every industry: earn incentives, threshold rewards, stretch rewards, engagement goals such as missions and streaks, partner offers, behaviour-triggered offers, milestone rewards, credit instruments such as vouchers and onboard credit, instant discounts, entitlement benefits such as upgrades, and advocacy rewards. Each is configured on the same eight dimensions: trigger, who, what, where, when, reward, funding and caps.
Who funds a promotion, and how are caps enforced?
Every mechanic names its funding source: the operator, a partner, or a split. The funding follows every accrual and discount into the ledger, so partner statements and the finance export read the same lines. Caps apply per transaction, per member per period, per program budget and per partner budget, and are enforced as the transaction runs rather than reconciled afterwards.
Can customers earn points for actions beyond purchases?
Yes. Referrals, event participation, store check-ins, product reviews, social interactions and content engagement are configured with the same rule engine as transactional earn. No separate systems, no integration complexity.
Related: Financial integrity · Safe migration · Concept documentation
Model your program on the engine before you commit to it.
Bring currencies, tiers, partner rules and your three hardest promotions. We will configure them with you.