A Blockchain poweredSmart Global RewardsPlatform

Rewarded my customer

Mints !

Received Mints

in my MINT wallet

“YIPEEE!!!”

I will book

a movie ticket tonight

with my Mints

Theatre

Café

We accept

Mints

AbstractRewards help the merchants acquire new customers and retain them.However, the process of rewarding and redemption has become costly and tedious to maintain. This has restricted the offering of such programs to only a few selected large merchants.

Convergent Technologies Inc. introduces a platform called MINT that aims to address these pain points by leveraging the new avenues that took birth via new technologies like Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence for building stronger relationships between the customers and merchants.

Annie

David

Received Mints from Annie

Now lemme buy a cool

“HEADPHONE”

Electronics

We accept

Mints

MINT is a Blockchain powered Smart Global Rewards Platform. MINT introduces native points called “Mints” to enhance the acquisition, retention and targeting activities of the merchant through the following key features:

2. Mints being on blockchain enables the value interchange between merchants and customers or between customers directly.

4. The customers will get some Mints as a welcome bonus when they get on-boarded on MINT and also when they provide a few non-personally identifiable information. Thereon, the customers would get rewarded with Mints through referral programs or based on the offers and promotions of the participating merchants.

Based on the above features, we believe that the incentives are strongly aligned to develop the needed ecosystem and address the challenges of fragmented rewards market that exists today. The team behind MINT is composed of experienced veterans and talented engineers in relevant industries like loyalty programs and blockchain. They look forward to seeing improvements in loyalty and rewards industry evolve through their efforts on MINT.

3. Through MINT, both online and offline merchants can create focused marketing campaigns easier and faster than ever before. The artificial intelligence capabilities of MINT will maximise the effectiveness of campaigns and provide the key insights. The merchant fees charged for running marketing campaigns forms the revenue stream for MINT.

1. Mints introduced through a smart contract on proven Blockchain technology inherits the advantages of auditability, globalization, decentralization and security. Blockchain being open source allows third parties to create apps involving Mints hence enhancing its ecosystem.

Contents

The Flow of Mints

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REFERENCES 16

IntroductionCurrent Scenario

In the US, loyalty program enrollment increased from 2.65 billion in 2012 to 3.32 billion in 2015. However only half of loyalty program participants are active,

[1][8]and one-fifth of those active participants never redeemed their rewards. The loyalty management market is projected to grow from USD 1.68 Billion in 2016 to USD 4.59 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 22.2% during the forecast period,

[2][9]2016 to 2021. This is when the industry is not working at its full potential due to the inefficiencies discussed below. The above are just the costs involved to run loyalty management programs but not the market size of loyalty rewards

[3]which runs to hundreds of billions every year. There is no reliable information about the total global market size of loyalty and rewards due to its fragmented nature across geographies. Financial rewards are the most highly

[4]valued loyalty-program benefits for members of all ages.

Any merchant, whether an e-commerce outlet or a brick and mortar store, has the following three high-level objectives that drive the business:

The above data clearly establishes that there is confusion among users about the different mechanics of each loyalty program, difficulties in points transfer, lack of user engagement, desire for a consolidated rewards program and more. A list of challenges with the existing Loyalty and Reward schemes (“programs”):

Loyalty and reward programs are an excellent means to drive all of these three objectives, however, most of these programs are either perceived to be of low value by the customer or the customers perceive the collection goals to be unreachable.

Business Problem

1. Small brick and mortar stores have low budgets for such programs. They

2. Customer Loyalty and Retention1. Customer Acquisition

3. Up-sell and Cross-sell to existing customers

1

2

8. Reward points are institutional - there is no upper limit to the number of points that can be created. In addition, the terms of acquisition and redemption of reward points can be changed anytime at the discretion of the merchants issuing them.

4. A user cannot join forces with another user to claim a reward - for example, if a reward requires a user to have 1,000 points to redeem and the user has only 800 points, she cannot ask her friend or family (who may have the requisite 200 points) to transfer those to her account.

3. For a customer, existing reward points are sitting idle across multiple programs while at the same time the merchants are not able to harness valuable customer data. It is not possible for a user to reconcile and club

[5]various reward programs together at a single place.

6. Among the merchants offering reward schemes, there is no large scale integration of the reward points across multiple merchant groups for the

[6]points to be valuable and usable in a seamless fashion.

5. Most merchants are not in a position to offer reward points due to costs involved and the complexities in building and managing the rewards program. Even if merchants try to join forces behind a consolidated rewards program, they end up realizing that their own objectives are not aligned with the objectives of such programs.

also have no access to customer data and still use offline methods to drive retention.

2. Merchants with functional reward programs carry substantial balance sheet liabilities (an obligation to be fulfilled later) because of unclaimed points and rewards.

7. Most of these programs have scant regard for the privacy and data of the customers they enrol. Personally identifiable information is traded and shared freely among the merchants on these programs in many cases. Thus customers hesitate to share personal information like phone number and address at the checkout counters.

3

In addition to the above challenges with the reward programs, the current digital marketing programs are riddled with large inefficiencies for merchants and customers. For advertisers and merchants, it is difficult to achieve accurate delivery of the messages they want to share with prospects and customers. Most merchants pay for the targeted advertisements on the basis of exposure, clicks, interactions and other behaviours. Unfortunately, all of these are indirect measures and lead to a large non-transparent and inefficient marketing expenditure from merchants. Users are exposed to a large number of promotions and offers which do not give them the information they require. In addition, they do not get any incentives to receive these promotions or responding to them.

1. Facility for merchants to offer targeted and focussed discounts and offers

9. In the case of business to business transactions, hardly any worthwhile loyalty schemes exist today between manufacturers and retailers.

Proposed Solution

Convergent Technologies Inc. is best positioned with the required capabilities and prerequisites to capture this opportunity. We are proposing a digital loyalty and rewards platform called MINT and smart reward points called Mints. The MINT platform has the following broad capabilities:

It is clear that the targeted marketing industry and reward points programs have very little overlap. With the advent of blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies, it is now possible to synergize these two industries and have the incentives of every stakeholder aligned to make the entire ecosystem efficient.

The rewards oriented marketing industry is flooded with bespoke and largely ineffective loyalty schemes; at best they promote loyalty and endure but few are profitable; at worst they are costly, ineffectual and short-lived.

4. Ability to transfer Mints across users, merchants and other ecosystem partners

2. Analytical capabilities for merchants to identify best prospects and generate relevant offers and promotions

3. Offers and promotions for Users accessible via a mobile app

4

To kickstart the ecosystem, there will be incentives to the users signing up and merchants offering and redeeming Mints. Merchants can run broadly three types of fully customizable promotional schemes to reward their customers with Mints. A few examples are:

2. Category based Offers - where Mints are awarded in case of transactions performed in specific store categories. As an example, a purchase in the clothing section of a departmental store may lead to the user winning 100 Mints.

1. Value based Offers - where prospective customers get rewarded in Mints for businesses transactions above a particular threshold. Example a purchase of over �$100 in a store will entitle a user to receive 100 Mints.

The whole user base of Mints holders and mobile app users will be accessible to the merchants enrolling for the program since the launch/soft-launch of MINT.

The MINT system for merchants will have a set of pre-built smart marketing templates which they can configure for running their campaigns. These campaigns will be designed to target users (on the basis of demographics or

3. Visit or Interaction based Offers - where Mints are awarded to prospects for store or website visits without any purchase commitment. An example of this can be a restaurant awarding 100 Mints to a user for just dropping in without ordering any items from the menu or upvoting their Facebook page.

MerchantPartners

Brand Programs

Mints

Increased ConsumerSpend

Increased Redemption

Increased ConsumerEngagement

Shopping Contest &Promotions

Redemption

FUTURE MARKET PLACE

if country “United States”=

& if = orzipcode “35001” “35002”

& if =gender “female”

& if between age 35 and 40

& if > income $50k

Female 24yrs$53K #35001, USA

Female 35yrs$58K #35001, USA

Male 39yrs$70K #35002, Canada

Female 38yrs$53K #35002, USA

Female 40yrs$61K #35001, USA

Male 32yrs$68K #35009, USA

Female 37yrs$65K #35002, USA

Beauty Saloon

MINT will also offer tailor-made, digital, optimized ad campaign strategies, provide anonymized CRM data and consumer behavior reports. The rich functionality of MINT will ensure consistency of a brand’s messaging and promotions. Merchants and advertisers can measure the performance of ongoing and completed marketing promotional offers. Through customizable digital rewards programs configured in MINT, merchants will be

[7][10]able to offer personalized incentives such as coupons, freebies, promotions, as well as Mints that encourage customer loyalty, upsell, cross-sell and thus grow their business. The merchant dashboard will also give the merchants key insights into the performance or effectiveness of their campaigns and course correct if they need to.

segmentation) with offers and promotions while dynamically pricing them in case of an online merchant. Participating merchants will be able to configure and update their specific program parameters through a simple dashboard that allows them to calibrate what percentage of transaction revenue they are happy to offer back to customers as reward for purchases and what percentage discount they are happy to give for any amount of Mints traded for in a transaction, for specified products or services, or indeed their entire inventory. MINT will have an advanced analytics engine based on pattern recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to recommend mutually best offers and promotions for the users and merchants.

5

When customers earn Mints, they are empowered to use it in more ways than traditional customer loyalty programs can ever be used. In both conventional and blockchain-based rewards systems, customers can acquire rewards and incentives using their points. However, in this new ecosystem, the points from one merchant can be used to acquire rewards from any other merchant within the ecosystem.

The MINT platform does not retain any information that can personally identify a user. No such personal information is shared with the merchants for running their marketing campaigns. The Mints users can also choose whether or not to accept and respond to advertisements.

One goal of the MINT platform is to increase Internet-based consumption. MINT will have integrated online ordering systems, electronic gift cards, and digital wallet offerings into the website and app-driven loyalty programs, creating a one-stop platform for connecting brands to customers.

Users can begin earning Mints right away by doing all the things they love to do online or offline, whether it be shopping for the ultimate pair of shoes, ordering their favourite food or buying groceries from their favourite supermarket. It's that simple.

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Tech Overview

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MINT Mobile Application:

We can broadly divide the architecture of MINT Platform into the following components.

The mobile application will be designed as a wallet for the Mints. At the time of user sign-up, the user needs to confirm his mobile number followed by optionally answering a set of non-personally identifiable information. These optional questions may include age range, gender, pincode city and country, relationship status, education etc. The application can be used to collect his welcome bonus Mints, send/receive Mints on his wallet account from merchants or friends. Through the application, the customer can receive the notifications about his wallet and offers/promotions from the merchants of interest. The mobile application will also include a blockchain based wallet allowing users to hold and transfer Mints on the blockchain independent of MINT.

1. Blockchain APIs interfacing with the nodes run by MINTS.

3. Android and iOS application developed natively using PhoneGap (Apache

The components for the app include Mints wallet, Blockchain wallet, transaction history and account management. The preferred technologies to be used for this application include:

2. Cache and local database configuration on mobile apps to effectively manage the data and showing of graphs etc.

3. Restful APIs (supporting popular tech stacks like PHP, Java, Python) for various wallet related operations namely wallet creation, address generation, send and receive and APIs for registering transactions on the Blockchain.

4. QR code scanner - open source industry standard libraries (for example Zebra Crossing).

MINT Blockchain Platform:Built to support thousands of merchants and millions of users, the transactions on the MINT platform will enable instant confirmations on value transfers for better customer experience. The artificial intelligence and data mining systems on the platform work to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the marketing campaigns initiated by the merchants. The infrastructure will be built to reduce the friction for transfers between the blockchain and the platform.

Cordova), test simulators to maintain consistency across various Android versions and various mobile phone manufacturing companies (using third party service like Appcelerator).

1. EOS/Ethereum/iOTA based blockchain platform.

4. Solidity/Python based smart contracts.

5. Xamarin for code version consistency across iOS and Android.

2. EOS/ETH/ERC20 standard based tokens.

5. Platform integration with dApp browsers like Toshi/Status browser, Metamask browser add-on.

The components for this component include blockchain wallet, smart contracts and blockchain based transfer and redemptions. The preferred technology for this will be among:

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In the current scenario, most reward programs have their own mechanism of crediting or debiting reward points from or to customers through a card or a mobile number. This creates a physical dependency on cards issued by individual merchants or leads to personal data being captured by the PoS agents. MINT proposes a custom built hardware add-on to be installed at the PoS. This allows customers to associate their purchase to their MINT account without interrupting the PoS agent.

3. Custom made hardware component designed and manufactured by a 3rd party.

2 . PIs for Merchant POS Integration

The web portal provided to the merchants will be enabling the onboarding of the merchants, provide statistics about the Mints transfers to/from their customers, broad statistics about their customer behaviour, setting up of marketing campaigns and measure the effectiveness of the running and completed campaigns. The technology components used here are:

2. Caching using Redis.

MINT Merchant Dashboard:

4. React JS based admin portals for merchant functionalities in the front end.5. Open source libraries for graphs for visualizing analytical data related to

campaigns and customer demographics.

1. Ruby on Rails as the backend framework.

6. Smart / AI based recommendation engine for creation of new campaigns based on analytical data and customer demographic

3. A suitable relational data store architecture (scalability and throughput being the key performance metrics).

MINT PoS add-on:

This will have the following technology components:

1. Open source libraries and SDKs with Custom ROM for QR based information sharing

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On the technical side, Convergent Technologies Inc. proposes to use the proven infrastructure of a public blockchain to grant, transfer and redeem the Mints. The MINT infrastructure will be hosted on SaaS-based hardware for dynamic scalability and high availability. MINT will have open interfaces and APIs for other ecosystem partners to be able to create independent applications using Mints. This will allow PoS softwares, financial systems and e-commerce websites to integrate with the MINT platform and the PoS addon allowing a wider range of merchants to award and redeem Mints to their respective customers.

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EcosystemThe MINT Platform powered by blockchain technology will be accessible to both merchants and customers via a mobile app and a web front. The success of the initiative depends on a sufficiently large pool of customers, merchants and willing partners using the system.

The main agenda of Convergent Technologies Inc. will be to create this ecosystem whether be it in technology, market or product dimensions.

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Customer Channel

Flow of Mints

Merchants Channel

As the Mints are based on blockchain technology, a fixed number of Mints will be created at inception. Approximately 80% of the Mints will be utilized to incentivise the customers and ecosystem. The remaining 20% will be locked for the first two years by Convergent Technologies Inc. This can only be used by Convergent Technologies Inc. to fund its operations and marketing activities at a later stage.

Merchants can receive Mints from the customers who respond to their offers and promotions. In addition, they may be able to reward Mints they have accrued to the users depending on the schemes on offer.

Distribution of Mints

Users receive Mints on signup. Additional Mints will be rewarded for sharing information like age band, marital status etc. (no personally identifiable information). They may also receive Mints when they respond to merchant offers and while making purchases. Do note that there will be a reduction in the sign-up bonus for each user as more and more customers join the platform. Users may also receive Mints for referring friends and family to the MINT platform.

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Future Roadmap

MINT Platform development

The engine which will power the capabilities outlined above for the customers and

+ 2 Months Blockchain development & Infrastructure setup

Creation of reward points and associated technical

+ 2 Months

Mobile App & Website development

The interfaces for the users and merchants to be able to use the MINT

+ 3 Months

tØ

Soft launch & trial with select users & merchants

Release of the platform for early users and adopters

+ 1 Months

Go live+ 3 Months

MINT PoS addon+ 1 Months

Ecosystem growthOngoing

This idea was conceived by the co-founders in the last quarter of 2018 and there is already a work in progress for various components of MINT. The initial effort will be focussed on building the technology that underpins MINT followed by an additional emphasis on growing the ecosystem via marketing initiatives. Based on the assumption that the company has access to capital as per the enclosed proposal, an outline of the timelines since then to deliver MINT is as below:

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Team

Manish has an experience of four years in the field of BigData, especially on Hadoop framework and its ecosystem. He contributes open source code to Hadoop utilities and has worked with large corporations to deliver big data solutions.

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitingoyal

Chinmay Patil, Senior EngineerChinmay is an active member of the blockchain community. He has developed and audited smart contracts using the Ethereum blockchain. He has a degree in computer science from VJTI, Mumbai and has a deep understanding of Lightning Network and Ethereum based Smart Contracts. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patilchinmay01/

Hemanth is an Engineering and an MBA graduate who has more than 13 years of experience in E2E IT delivery and leadership with a deep understanding of Blockchain, credit cards and payment industries in general. Hemanth has a very successful track record of handling and delivering multi-million dollar IT programs.

Hemanth Kumar K V, Co- Founder & CEO

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemanthkv/

Nitin Goyal, Co- Founder & CTO

Manish Bajaj, Senior Engineer

Nitin has more than 20 years of experience in digital technologies. In his last role with British Telecom, he was instrumental in using the power of big data to analyze customer behaviour. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from IIT, Roorkee and an MBA with Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar.

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Co-Founders

Consultants

Challenges

1. Access to engineering and marketing talent.

3. User onboarding is slow as users might not see a value in joining this program (slow network effects).

4. Lack of liquidity for the Mints – where users are not able to find options to cash out Mints which slows adoption. In the initial launch, we are not offering any avenue for users to cash out Mints directly.

2. Slow adoption by merchants as they either find a poor response from users or discover no added value in coming on-board.

The following are the potential challenges we foresee however these can be reasonably addressed by timely access to capital that gets used as incentives (cash backs, bonuses, compensation):

5. Resistance by merchants to switch existing loyalty schemes with MINT.

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References

3. $48 Billion Worth of Consumer Loyalty Reward Points Dispensed Each Year, Yet One-Third Are Never Cashed In.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110419006270/en/48-Billion-Worth-Consumer-Loyalty-Reward-Points - This implies that the total market globally will be atleast $500 Billion (in 2019, 10 times the US estimates for 2011)

2. Loyalty Management Market worth 4.59 Billion USD by 2021 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/loyalty-management.asp

4. Discounts Dominate, But Loyalty Program Rewards Go Deeper Than Dollars

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/12/11/can-blockchain-reinvigorate-loyalty-programs/#28b872e81456

7. What shoppers really want from personalized marketing https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-

sales/our-insights/what-shoppers-really-want-from-personalized-marketing

https://www.statista.com/statistics/724013/number-loyalty-program-memberships-usa

8. Number of individual loyalty program memberships in the United States from 2006 to 2016:

https://www.nielsen.com/in/en/insights/news/2016/discounts-dominate-but-loyalty-program-rewards-go-deeper-than-dollars.html

1. Deloitte: Making Blockchain Real for Customer Loyalty Rewards Programs. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/financial-services/articles/making-blockchain-real-customer-loyalty-rewards-programs.html

5. Making loyalty pay: Six lessons from the innovators “When customers know their loyalty to one brand or store gets them discount opportunities at many others, they’re more willing to spend. Partner with like (but non-competing) brands for effective cross-promotion and data-sharing”

6. Can Blockchain Reinvigorate Loyalty Programs? “In a global loyalty study, 79% of participants said that choosing among several types of rewards is very appealing to them.”

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/making-loyalty-pay-six-lessons-from-the-innovators

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https://www.bellycard.com/resources/customer-retention-marketing-

9. Loyalty Management Market by Type of Solution (Customer Loyalty, Employee Retention, and Channel Loyalty), Deployment Type (On-Premises and On-Demand), Organization Size (SMEs and Large Enterprises), Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/loyalty-management-market-172873907.html

10. Small Business Survey 2016: Marketing & Customer Retention Trends

insights

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