LoyaltyOne

LoyaltyOne

Type	Wholly owned subsidiary of Alliance Data
Industry	Loyalty marketing and enterprise services
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Key people	Bryan A. Pearson President and CEO
Services	Customer insight and strategy Loyalty marketing and programs Customer experience management
Number of employees	1,500
Parent	Alliance Data
Website	www.loyalty.com

LoyaltyOne, Co. is a global provider of loyalty marketing and programs to enterprises in the retail, financial services, grocery, petroleum retail, travel, and hospitality sectors. The company offers services such as coalition programs (Air Miles Reward Program, Air Miles for Social Change), analytics and retail solutions, loyalty consulting, agency services, and industry research capabilities through Colloquy.

LoyaltyOne was started by Craig Underwood, Sam Duboc, and Rob Gierkink in 1991 as a loyalty program that would "reward consumers' loyalty by giving them opportunities to travel." On March 30, 1992, the Air Miles Reward Program was launched. In its first six months, the venture attracted nearly two million customers. The original group of thirteen sponsors included Bank of Montreal and Canada Safeway.

Over the next six years, the business grew and in July 1998 it was acquired by Texas-based Alliance Data.

LoyaltyOne has approximately 1,500 employees in offices including Toronto, Mississauga, Calgary, Montreal, Brazil, and Cincinnati. The most notable of LoyaltyOne’s offices is its Customer Care Centre in Mississauga, Ontario. Built in late 2009, this building features the largest solar array in Canada and has over 800 solar panels. LoyaltyOne is currently headed by CEO and President Bryan Pearson. Pearson joined The Loyalty Group (now owned by Alliance Data) in 1992. He was appointed president of the Air Miles Reward Program in 1999 and appointed president of LoyaltyOne in 2006.

Air Miles is the most recognizable of LoyaltyOne’s services. It is a coalition loyalty program that offers consumers reward miles for their everyday purchases that they can redeem for more than 800 rewards. With over 10 million collectors, Air Miles is the largest Canadian loyalty program.

In 2011 Air Miles Canada quietly announced that all points would expire with no compensation to its members after 5 years of being issued. In 2016 with months before the January 1st 2017 deadline was about to be enacted, Canadian news media began to heavily report on the impending deadline with stories of Canadian's struggling to redeem their long collected points. Members who redeemed the points fearing their loss were then outraged about having used up their collected points needlessly. Customers complained that they 'wasted' points on things they didn't want in fear of losing all the points that had been collected.