Article
Adyen and Talon.One: Why loyalty belongs at the moment of payment
The transaction could become one of the most valuable moments for customer recognition, loyalty, and long-term growth.
The next evolution of loyalty is happening at the point of purchase. One of your best customers walks into your flagship store. They’ve shopped with your company for eight years, both online and in-store. They rarely return items, don’t tend to wait for a sale, and regularly recommend your store to friends and family.
Today, they pick up a jacket, tap their card, and walk out.
Unless they open your app, scan a loyalty card, or otherwise identify themselves, your systems may see that loyal customer as just another transaction. This leaves valuable customer insight disconnected from the moment it could help inform the experience.
This points to a broader challenge for commerce: businesses know more about their customers than ever, but much of that intelligence remains disconnected from the moment a customer is ready to buy. Bringing payments and loyalty closer together creates an opportunity to close that gap.
On July 1, Adyen closed its acquisition of Talon.One. At the heart of that decision is a belief that the transaction can play a much bigger role in the customer relationship. Together, we see an opportunity for businesses to recognize more customers and act on what they know, at the moment it matters the most.
The cost of the anonymous shopper
For many businesses, a significant share of customers still move through the purchase journey without being recognized.
Online, the challenge looks slightly different: guest checkout can limit what businesses know about the customer, while mandatory account creation causes 19% of online shoppers to abandon checkout. And, as AI shopping agents begin to transact on customers’ behalf, identifying the person behind a purchase may become more complex.
At the same time, customers increasingly expect relevant experiences from brands. According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when that doesn’t happen. The same research found that personalization most often drives a 10-15% revenue lift.
Without being able to recognize a shopper, however, businesses have less context to make those interactions relevant.
Why loyalty alone hasn't closed the gap
Loyalty programs give customers a reason to identify themselves, but they only capture part of the customer base.
These programs also often rely on shoppers taking an additional action, whether that’s downloading an app, scanning a QR code, or creating an account. Even among customers who enroll in loyalty programs, engagement varies. The average American belongs to more than 20 loyalty programs, but engages with only around eleven.
The result is a fragmented picture of the customer, with valuable information often spread across different systems.
Payments can face a similar challenge. At checkout, the system may see a card or another payment credential, with the customer context sitting elsewhere in the business. When payments, loyalty, and other customer systems operate separately, loyal, high-value customers could look much like any other customer at checkout, limiting the business’s ability to recognize them, account for their history, or make the most relevant decision in the moment.
Where loyalty and payments come together
Every purchase passes through the payment moment, making it one of the most consistent touchpoints across the customer journey. It’s also a moment when customer intent becomes commercial reality. That makes the transaction more than the final step in a purchase; it can become a decision point where recognition, loyalty, and commercial strategy come together.
We believe that’s where the next evolution of loyalty will happen: not as a separate layer customers have to engage with, but increasingly part of the transaction itself.
Adyen sits at that moment online, in-store, and across emerging agentic channels. Through Dynamic Identification, our platform can recognize that a card tapped in a store in Paris is the same one used online in Germany last year, connecting those interactions across channels and sub-brands within the same business.
Talon.One provides the loyalty and promotions infrastructure behind over 300 global brands, enabling businesses to determine and apply the right incentive, reward, or nudge for each shopper and purchase context.
Bringing these capabilities together creates a rich opportunity to connect customer recognition, loyalty and payments at the point of purchase, giving businesses more contextual data to make decisions without adding unnecessary friction to checkout.
What this could look like in practice
Let’s return to that customer at your flagship store. When they tap their card, you can now recognize in the moment who they are: a returning (and valued) customer, and connect the transaction with relevant loyalty information.
Rather than relying on a blanket 20% discount, you can offer a reward based on what you know about the customer and apply it as part of the purchase experience. Crucially, the customer doesn’t need to take an additional step at checkout, while you have more context to make decisions around incentives, margin and the long-term customer relationship. That relationship matters commercially too: it’s well known that acquiring a new customer can cost anywhere from five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one, making it even more valuable to recognize and grow the customers you already have.
As a business, you still get to set the strategy, budget, and policies. The difference is that those decisions can be informed by a more connected view of the customer across channels, markets, and sub-brands within the same business. This gives you more context to incentivize the shopper based on the outcome you choose, whether that’s conversion, margin, lifetime value or moving the stock you need to sell.
“Joining Adyen allows us to embed real-time decisioning at the core of every transaction. Together, we enable merchants to connect customer identity with loyalty, pricing and promotions in real time, in-store and online, driving better outcomes for our customers.”
Christoph Gerber
Founder and CEO, Talon.One
What's next
For years, Adyen’s unified commerce strategy has helped merchants connect their online and in-store payments to build a more complete view of their customers. The next step is turning more of that understanding into action.
Bringing Adyen and Talon.One together gives businesses an opportunity to act on more of that context at the point of purchase, connecting recognition, loyalty and payments when a customer is ready to buy.
For business leaders, that requires a shift in how we think about the transaction itself. Checkout has long been treated as the end of the customer journey. We see the potential for it to become something much more valuable, a moment where businesses can recognize customers, make smarter commercial decisions, and strengthen the relationship beyond that individual purchase. The opportunity is now to make the transaction work harder, both for the benefit of customers and retailers.
