Loyalty programs are usually built around transactions. PAYBACK believes they can also be built around behavior.

In this episode of MobileGroove, recorded live at PGC London, I speak with Nico Winkelhaus, VP Digital Marketing at PAYBACK, about why Germany’s largest loyalty program expanded into gaming and what that move signals about the future of loyalty, rewarded engagement and super app strategy.

PAYBACK has spent 25 years building scale in retail. Today it spans travel, banking, insurance and digital services inside one of Germany’s leading shopping apps. The move to expand into gaming in 2022 was rooted in user data and a clear understanding of how people already interact with the app.

With more than 20 million smartphone gamers in Germany, the logic was simple: reward users not only for what they buy, but for how they spend their digital time.

In this episode, Nico explains:

• Why gaming was a natural extension of PAYBACK’s ecosystem rather than a leap into the unknown

• How PAYBACK delivers incremental reach to gaming advertisers instead of recycling the same high-affinity rewarded users

• Why adding gaming increases overall activity in the app rather than cannibalizing retail engagement

• What personalization at scale actually means when you are working toward millions of differentiated offers

• Why loyalty remains a low-involvement product and why simplicity, not feature density, determines success

• How PAYBACK separates physical retail interactions from digital engagement within the same platform

• What regulatory shifts and the rise of web shops could mean for loyalty platforms and studios

• Why rewarded mechanics, first proven in gaming, may expand into other industries

If you work in gaming, retail, commerce or growth, this episode offers a practical look at how loyalty, rewarded mechanics and super app ambitions intersect in the real world.

Chapters:

0:00 - Payback's Evolution and the Convergence with Gaming

2:19 - Gaming as a Mass Market for Loyalty Programs

4:11 - Leveraging Data for Targeted Rewards and Broad Reach

7:43 - Relevancy, Hyperpersonalization, and Core DNA

11:16 - Evolving to a Loyalty Super App and Maintaining Simplicity

14:26 - Gaming as an Engagement Success Feature and the Future of Rewarded UA

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