WorldCard

WorldCard 1 is Asia’s largest network of consumer lifestyle services with 2.3 million members. Benefits and rewards are available at over 1,600 products & services retailers across Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Started in 1994, the program has established alliances with anchor partners like Suntec City Mall, Star Cruises and Jurong Point Shopping Centre in Singapore; Genting Highlands Resort, Porsche Drivers Club and the Sunrise Group in Malaysia; and the King Parrot food & beverage chain in Hong Kong. WorldCard plans to extend into the United Kingdom when gaming & entertainment group, Stanley Leisure, starts issuing and accepting the card. There are also plans to extend to China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India.

Members accrue loyalty points in different countries and are able to use accumulated points at any of the merchant outlets to substitute as full or partial cash payment for their purchases. A WorldCard centre in each country will also regularly make offers to members to redeem points for movie tickets, concerts, shows, new product previews and other merchandises.

Anchor program partners are given the capacity to issue their own co-brand WorldCard. There are currently over 20 co-brand partners in the WorldCard Community.

The Technology

A distributed real-time server system forms the foundation of the technology supporting the WorldCard program, comprising a group of mirrored servers located in each WorldCard Centre in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Built on an application platform developed since 1984, it processes over 1.5 million transactions daily. The loyalty points technology processes the points variables in real-time enabling members and merchants to transact them like hard currency. The architecture leverages existing credit card terminals in most retail outlets. Cooperative alliances with major banks allows the WorldCard software to be installed on their Electronic Draft Terminals (also known as Credit Card Terminal). The system has a currency exchange rate mechanism to support WorldCard international coverage.

The Operator

WorldCard is managed by a joint venture of two anchor co-brand partners, Genting Resorts and Star Cruises. It also offers membership program services to other companies. These different card marketing programs carry a “WorldCard-Powered” logo on the backface of the cards. An example is the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Company, which is part of the WorldCard merchant network offering 10x WorldCard Points benefits to WorldCard members. It also has its own Coffee Bean Card membership program which serves both as a prepaid card as well as a points loyalty program (also known as Bean Points). alternative words : worldcard world card Worldcard