Blu Label’s new vouchers will bring credit card–like rewards to people who use cash in South Africa
Blu Label Unlimited (Blu) will soon launch the Blu Voucher, a product that lets customers purchase a single voucher to spend across multiple locations while earning rewards.
In an interview with What’s Next with Aki Anastasiou, Blu Label co-CEO Brett Levy explained that they will use artificial intelligence to create personalised vouchers for customers.
“All we’re doing, is we’re going to create one voucher that is absolutely unique to you as a customer,” Levy said.
“I don’t want to change your habit — how you buy it, where you buy it, or how you pay for it, because those things are critical to people.”
Levy said the system would know a customer’s spending habits and provide a voucher they could then use to buy airtime, prepaid electricity, and any other goods and services they usually would.
Customers who use the platform would earn a reward, such as getting extra value on the airtime they purchased using the voucher.
“The whole experience for you is going to be amazing, because you won’t have to change any of your habits, but you will feel like you’re getting a reward — exactly like a credit card,” he said.
Levy was referring to the rewards programmes offered by many of South Africa’s top banks, such as Absa Rewards, Capitec Live Better, Discovery Miles, FNB eBucks, Nedbank Greenbacks, and Standard Bank uCount.
“Why doesn’t the cash world have that? The cash world should have, that right? That’s what we’re doing in our voucher.”
“We are taking this entire world that you understand in credit cards, and we’re putting it together for you in a cash voucher.”
He said these can also double as gift cards, allowing people to buy a voucher for a certain amount that can be spent whichever way they want.
Fourth evolution of Blu Label
“What’s so exciting about this is that we are doing exactly what we’ve done forever — you just do it differently,” said Levy.
He explained that when they started the business, they only did physical vouchers. Customers walked into a store, bought a physical scratch-off voucher, and entered the PIN on their phone.
“If we did that today, we’d be out of business. What happens over time is we created a virtual voucher, so the card went away, and it all went over the air,” Levy said.
“And if we did that today, we’d also be out of business. What happened next, it became PIN-less. Now you go on your bank, tap in the app, and all of a sudden it tops up your phone directly — amazing.”
Levy said PIN-less top-ups were the third evolution of South Africa’s voucher business. The single, integrated Blu One Voucher will be the fourth.
“This will be the next 10 or 12 years of distribution. It’s exactly what we do, we’re just doing it differently. We keep evolving, because if I don’t, you as a customer will just go elsewhere.”
Levy said the ecosystem already supported hundreds of products. “Do you really want to go and buy 20 different vouchers — which you do today by the way — or just buy one voucher and do all 20 things?”
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