Festive shopping has always been a frenzied affair among Indians with retailers displaying their best wares and offering a variety of deals, discounts and offers to choose from! This year, though, a subtle shift is seen in the way young India is splurging during festivals.
Better informed, more conscious young buyers are tracking the reward points they win on their purchases far more closely than their credit cards! Over the past few months, we’ve observed a growing preference among shoppers to stock up their accumulated reward points and use them only for festive splurging. This mindset is now reshaping the rewards ecosystem and here’s why:
They’re light and layer-free
For shopaholics, reward points feel much lighter than their credit cards because they come with no emotional and financial baggage. You don’t have to worry about layers of bills, interest rates and reminders associated with credit cards to redeem and enjoy your reward points. They let you shop till you drop guilt-free without letting you realise that you’re earning something on every penny you spend!
They’re gifts you’ve earned
The festive season is all about indulgence and feeling good about yourself and your achievements. When you’ve worked hard to buy yourself everything you dream of, you know you’ve earned the right to enjoy all the perks that come with it. Reward points are these perks or gifts. They’re something precious that you’ve earned over time that are just waiting to be redeemed in a big way! During celebrations when expenses are high, a freebie just makes your day!
They’re simple to redeem
Gone are the days when shoppers would be wary about accepting reward points because of the complex process involved to redeem them! These days, reward points are the easiest, safest and quickest to enjoy. They have simplified rewards like never before. With a unified, card-linked platform, customers enjoy a No App, No OTP, No Scan, No Login experience, just pay as usual and watch every purchase turn into instant rewards across brands.
As digital payments become near-invisible in everyday commerce, loyalty is undergoing a quiet but fundamental shift. The next phase of rewards will not be driven by louder offers or deeper discounts, but by how seamlessly value is embedded into the payment experience itself.
Festive consumption, in particular, is accelerating this transition. Shoppers are no longer motivated by transactional benefits alone; they are responding to ecosystems that recognise their spending behaviour in real time and reward it instantly, without friction. In this emerging model, loyalty is not a programme consumers enrol into, it is an outcome they experience organically.
A whole new ‘Rewards’ verse
Shoppers today understand the meaning of ‘more’ in the retail landscape. Being a part of the rewards universe comes with several benefits, with points being just one aspect of that world. The other, is access to a multitude of brands all linked together as one wide rewards network. What this gives consumers is a variety of brands across categories, to redeem their reward points from, during the festive season. Imagine, you’ve been eyeing that exclusive Travel Bag from a particular high-end brand for months but haven’t yet collected enough cash to pick it up. Your accumulated reward points can get you that bag asking only for your patience in return!
For brands and retailers, this evolution calls for a strategic rethinking of loyalty design. Point accumulation is no longer the differentiator; relevance, timing, and ease of redemption are. The most effective loyalty ecosystems will be those that operate across categories, allow points to travel fluidly across brands, and align rewards with moments of high emotional spend, such as festivals.
In this context, partnerships and network-led rewards models will increasingly outperform standalone programmes, enabling brands to remain top-of-mind without relying on aggressive discounting.
Win-Win for retailers and consumers
When customers use their reward points, they tend to browse more, return more often, and engage more deeply, invariably garnering loyalty among their customers. Reward ecosystems, when designed well, create a loop of trust, familiarity, and feel-good value, which, during festival sales, create an even more powerful emotional connection among shoppers.
From a business standpoint, festive-led reward redemption is proving to be one of the most sustainable growth levers. Unlike one-time discounts, reward-led engagement drives repeat visits, higher basket sizes, and long-term customer lifetime value, making loyalty not a cost centre, but a strategic investment.
This festive season, reward points are no longer just a benefit, they are a behavioural currency. They reflect a deeper shift in how consumers perceive value, control spending, and reward themselves. As loyalty, payments, and commerce continue to converge, brands that embed effortless rewards into everyday transactions will define the future of festive consumption. In a market driven by emotion and experience, the smartest wins will belong to those who make indulgence feel earned, seamless, and guilt-free.
By Chandra Bhushan, Country Head – Enigmatic Smile India
