Reward Points - How They Work

In general, you earn a certain number or percentage of rewards for every dollar you charge on your credit card. Some cards reward you more for spending in certain areas or may only give you rewards on certain purchases

eward points are an incentive for customers to use their cards as much as they can. Banks gain from the interchange fee from merchant outlets, which in turn gain from higher sales. The user of a card, especially a credit card, benefits only if he uses it judiciously.

Do you know why reward points earned on credit/debit card transactionsexpire if not redeemed on time? Is it a significant loss? Why would a card company deduct the reward points if not redeemed? And, of course, why do card companies give reward points for using their cards in the first place?

When a bank offers you a credit/debit card, it talks at length about reward points. It is difficult to make sense of such talk, but for credit card companies, reward/loyalty programmes are an important element of their sales pitch.

Are reward points useful for card holders? Why are they important for card companies? The answer lies in the economics of reward points that we try to explain here.

Every time you use your credit/debit card for a transaction, the card company earns an 'interchange' fee from the merchant outlet. It can vary from 1% to 2.5%. The outlet can negotiate a lower fee if its volumes are high.

Apart from the 'interchange' fee, the card company makes money from the annual fee it charges from card holders and interest earned on rolling over unpaid bills. They share a part of earnings (mostly from interchange fee) with the card holder in the form of reward points to encourage him/her to use it more frequently.