Overview
A leading Tier 1 bank needed to move beyond saturated points-based rewards and deliver lifestyle-linked loyalty at pace.
Challenge
The bank’s points-based rewards were losing impact, but it couldn’t deliver lifestyle-linked loyalty - like a travel rewards portal - fast enough on its own. It needed Odynn’s specialised tech to turn strategy into a live, customer-facing capability.
Solution
Through NayaOne, the bank was introduced to Odynn and fast-tracked from vendor match to market launch. Using Odynn’s travel loyalty technology - integrated with airline partners, flexible redemption, and a fully branded interface - and NayaOne’s sandbox validation and delivery model, the bank launched a lifestyle-linked rewards portal in just 120 days, 3 – 5x faster than industry norms.
Results
- 120 days to launch - 3–5x faster than industry norm
- ⅔ lower evaluation cost
- Revenue in first billing cycle - incremental spend + merchant-funded income
- Higher engagement - uplift in NPS, activation of dormant users
Executive Summary
The economics of customer loyalty in banking are changing. For decades, points-based rewards programmes served as a reliable lever for retention and spend. But saturation, declining redemption rates, and shifting consumer expectations are eroding their impact.
At the same time, lifestyle-linked propositions - travel, dining, and experiential rewards - are proving to generate higher engagement, stronger lifetime value, and greater emotional connection. The challenge is not recognising this shift; it is delivering it at pace and scale.
In early 2025, a leading Tier 1 Bank partnered with Odynn, an AI embedded fintech and travel loyalty technology provider, to deploy a fully integrated travel rewards portal in just 120 days - bypassing the 12 - 18-month industry norm. This case demonstrates how a structured, repeatable delivery model can convert strategic intent into operational reality - fast, safely, and without compromising compliance. By delivering in under four months, the bank captured incremental card spend in high-margin travel categories, redirected transactions from third-party OTAs, and opened new merchant-funded revenue streams within the first billing cycle.
1. The Strategic Shift in Loyalty Economics
Erosion of traditional rewards models:
- ~40% of cardholders do not redeem loyalty points (Forrester, 2023)
- Digital NPS scores for loyalty experiences trail transaction journeys by 15 – 20 points (Gartner)
- Interchange and fee compression are forcing scrutiny of loyalty spend
Emergence of lifestyle integration as a competitive baseline:
- Up to 2x higher card engagement (BCG, 2024)
- 20 – 30% increase in active usage from dormant customers
- 5 – 7-point NPS lift within six months of launch
- 5 – 10% uplift in transaction volumes in targeted categories such as travel and dining, generating incremental interchange revenue
- New commission-based income from in-portal merchant bookings
Implication: Card-linked lifestyle ecosystems are no longer differentiators - they are becoming table stakes. Institutions that cannot deliver them quickly risk losing relevance to more agile competitors.
2. The Execution Gap: Why Banks Struggle to Deliver
Across Tier 1 and 2 banks, moving from vendor identification to full production still takes 12 – 18 months. Fewer than one in four proofs-of-concept (PoCs) scale beyond pilot stage (Celent, 2024), and more than 60% of onboarding efforts stall under the weight of procurement, compliance, or integration hurdles.
The constraint is rarely the innovation agenda - it is the execution architecture. Most delivery models are built for multi-year core systems rollouts, not for rapid capability layering. As a result, promising propositions get trapped in extended cycles, slowing time-to-value and eroding the institution’s competitive edge.
3. Case Overview: From Introduction to Market in 120 Days
In early 2025, a major Tier 1 bank was introduced to Odynn through NayaOne’s vendor ecosystem. The introduction triggered a focused, structured delivery model designed to minimise onboarding friction and compress time-to-market.
Phase 1 – Discovery (2 weeks)
Pre-qualified alignment between the bank’s loyalty strategy and Odynn’s capabilities enabled rapid scoping and internal alignment without an open RFP cycle.
Phase 2 – Validation (4 – 6 weeks)
Production-like testing in a secure, controlled environment using non-sensitive data. Risk, compliance, and legal stakeholders were engaged from day one, allowing governance to be completed in a single structured sprint.
Phase 3 – Deployment (8 weeks)
The solution was integrated via modular APIs, reducing dependencies on legacy systems. Go-live was coordinated alongside operational support setup to ensure immediate adoption and stability.
Outcome: From Odynn’s introduction to full market launch in four months – 3 – 5x faster than industry norms.
4. Solution Design: Lifestyle as a Platform
The Odynn-powered travel portal delivered a seamless, end-to-end experience for cardholders:
- Real-time booking for flights, hotels, and experiences
- Integrated loyalty redemption, linked directly to the bank’s card systems
- Fully branded interface, consistent with the bank’s digital estate
- Inclusion of two leading airline loyalty programmes, enabling customers to view and redeem their airline miles directly through the portal
- Cash-and-miles pricing options for both programmes, giving customers flexible redemption choices and reducing unspent points balances
- A consolidated loyalty wallet displaying balances from multiple schemes in one view
- Intelligent award recommendations based on transferability between airline and bank loyalty currencies, helping customers maximise redemption value
Strategic positioning: Designed as a lifestyle platform rather than a standalone product, the architecture allows the bank to add new verticals - such as dining, concierge, and premium redemption - without repeating procurement or integration cycles, accelerating future time-to-market. The inclusion of airline loyalty integrations also opens direct commercial pathways, from incremental interchange on high-value travel bookings to merchant-funded commission income from in-portal purchases.
5. Measurable Impact
Metric
Industry average
This case
Vendor intro to go-live
12 – 18 months
4 months
Vendor evaluation cost
$300K+
< $100K
Speed to commercial validation
3 – 6 months
4 weeks
Internal alignment cycle
3 – 5 meetings
1 structured sprint
Customer time-to-value
Delayed
Immediate
The delivery cycle was 3 – 5x faster than industry norms, while reducing evaluation cost by two-thirds.
6. NayaOne’s Role
While Odynn delivered the loyalty proposition, NayaOne’s delivery infrastructure sat behind every milestone:
While Odynn delivered the loyalty proposition, NayaOne’s delivery infrastructure sat behind every milestone:
- Matchmaking – Introduction to Odynn, aligned with strategic priorities
- Validation – Secure PoC in a synthetic-data sandbox
- Acceleration – Framing delivery as a managed service, enabling rapid stakeholder alignment
The same model is now in use for digital identity, cyber risk, GenAI, and payments propositions across multiple institutions.
Conclusion: From Pilot Mindset to Platform Capability
This case shows that the primary barrier to lifestyle-linked loyalty delivery is not the idea, but the execution. By pairing Odynn’s travel loyalty proposition with NayaOne’s structured delivery model, the bank moved from introduction to live market in just 120 days - setting a new benchmark for capability deployment.
For the industry, the signal is clear: the standard is shifting away from lengthy RFP cycles and drawn-out PoCs toward precision sourcing, structured validation, and scalable delivery infrastructure. Institutions able to adopt this model will set the pace for innovation; those that cannot, will be left behind.
For this bank, the gains went far beyond speed. The launch began generating incremental interchange and commission income in the first billing cycle, while setting a new standard for customer engagement.
Through the NayaOne ecosystem, vendors gain secure and rapid validation, supported by the delivery infrastructure that takes a proposition from first introduction to market in just four months. This approach matched the bank with Odynn and enabled safe, accelerated delivery. The same model is now helping banks worldwide validate and deploy new capabilities - from loyalty and travel to digital identity and AI - faster, safer, and with a clear path to revenue.