Commerce Media
Card-Linked Offers Explained: how the platforms work, who pays, and what data moves
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Card-linked offers are cash-back or discount rewards tied to a payment card. The cardholder activates an offer in a bank or loyalty app, pays with that card as usual, and the reward posts once the purchase is matched to the offer. The merchant funds the reward and pays a fee only when a matching purchase happens.
Contents
Key facts
- The main listed platform shrank in 2026. Cardlytics billed marketers $57.2 million in the third quarter of 2026, down 32% from a year earlier, and its monthly qualified users fell 19% to 186.6 million (Cardlytics Q3 2026 results, 5 November 2026).
- About four in ten dollars go back to cardholders. In 2025 Cardlytics billed $385.0 million, paid $151.7 million of it out as consumer incentives and reported $233.3 million of revenue (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025).
- Banks are taking offers in-house. Chase runs its offers on Figg, bought in 2022, and launched Chase Media Solutions on 3 April 2024 (Business Wire, 3 April 2024). Citi agreed to buy the offers platform Kard on 13 August 2026 (Citigroup, 13 August 2026).
- Card networks sell offers directly. Mastercard Commerce Media launched on 1 October 2025 claiming 25,000 advertisers and 500 million enrolled consumers (Marketing Dive, 1 October 2025).
- Issuer programs are large. Amex Offers drove $15 billion of global spend in 2024 (Axios, 6 October 2025), and Chase reports $11.2 billion of merchant spend driven by its offers in 2025 (chase.com, accessed 17 October 2026).
Definition
Card-linked offer: a merchant-funded incentive attached to a tokenised payment card. It qualifies automatically when the issuer, card network or a card-linking provider sees a matching transaction, with no coupon code, receipt scan or change at the merchant's till.
Card-linked offers are the oldest product of a financial media network. They are one of the four models described in Financial media networks explained, next to onsite ads, offsite audiences and platforms that run inside other banks. Every live program is listed in the commerce media networks directory, and the wider category sits under the commerce media hub.
How card-linked offers work, step by step
A card-linked offer has seven steps. The order is the same whether a bank runs the program itself or rents a platform.
- Enrolment. The cardholder links a card. In a bank app the card is already known. In a third-party app, a card-linking provider verifies the card with the network and returns a token. Fidel API, for example, says it creates a token for each linked card and does not store card numbers (Fidel API docs, accessed 9 November 2026).
- Targeting. The program picks which customers see which offer. Banks target on spend history: who buys in the category, who buys from a rival, who has lapsed.
- Activation. The customer taps "add" or "activate". Some programs skip this step and reward every eligible purchase.
- Purchase. The customer pays at the merchant in store or online. Nothing changes at the till.
- Matching. The issuer or network matches the transaction to the offer. Matching can use the authorisation message, which arrives in seconds, or the clearing record, which typically arrives after the merchant's bank processes the day's sales (Fidel API docs).
- Qualification. Rules decide whether the purchase earns the reward: dates, minimum spend, merchant locations, number of uses, and a return period before the reward is final.
- Reward and settlement. The cardholder gets a statement credit or cash back. The platform bills the merchant, pays the reward and pays the bank its share.
Cardlytics, which runs offers inside bank apps, says it generally pays consumer incentives one to four months after redemption. It pays a bank's share by the end of the month after it collects from the marketer (Cardlytics 10-Q, Q3 2026). That gap is why platforms carry large reward liabilities on their balance sheets.
Card-linked offers platforms and providers compared
Card-linked offers providers fall into four types: the bank runs its own program, a platform runs inside many banks, a card network distributes offers, or an API lets any app link cards. The table lists the companies with public sources.
8 of 8 rows
Chase Media Solutions (profile) | Issuer-owned, built on Figg (acquired 2022) | Chase app, web and email | Chase card and account transactions | Brand pays when a customer views the offer and buys | 84M customers; $11.2B merchant spend driven in 2025 (chase.com, accessed 17 Oct 2026) |
Cardlytics (profile) | Platform inside bank channels | Partner banks' apps and online banking; named partners include Chase, Wells Fargo and American Express | Anonymised purchase data through an ad server at the bank or hosted for it (company statement) | Cost per served sale, or engagement-based cost per redemption or per transaction | FY2025 billings $385.0M (10-K FY2025); Q3 2026 MQUs 186.6M (Q3 2026) |
Amex Offers | Issuer and network in one (closed loop) | Amex app and website | Amex card transactions | Merchant-funded | $15B global spend in 2024 (Axios, 6 Oct 2025) |
Mastercard Commerce Media (profile) | Card network | Issuer and partner channels; point-of-sale and wallets planned | Permissioned Mastercard transaction data | n/d (managed) | 25,000 advertisers, 500M enrolled consumers (company claim) (Marketing Dive, 1 Oct 2025) |
Visa Offers Platform and VMORC | Card network | Issuer and partner channels | Visa network data; VMORC is a read-only offer repository | n/d | n/d; documentation limited to authorised users (Visa Developer, accessed 9 Nov 2026) |
Kard (to be acquired by Citi) | Rewards API and offers network for fintechs and banks | Partner apps | Card transactions of partner cardholders | Brands pay for verified purchases (company claim) | "47M+ cardholders" in its network (company claim) (getkard.com, accessed 9 Nov 2026) |
Fidel API | Card-linking API | Any app the developer builds | Authorisation, clearing and refund events for linked cards on Visa, Mastercard and Amex | n/d (not published) | Available in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Sweden and UAE; Japan in beta (Fidel API docs) |
Zilch ASPN | BNPL card with merchant-funded deals | Zilch app | Zilch card transactions | Merchants pay per sale | 3M+ customers at June 2023 opening (Zilch, June 2023) |
Chase Media Solutions (profile)
- Type
Issuer-owned, built on Figg (acquired 2022)
- Where offers appear
Chase app, web and email
- Data the provider sees
Chase card and account transactions
- Who pays, and how
Brand pays when a customer views the offer and buys
Cardlytics (profile)
- Type
Platform inside bank channels
- Where offers appear
Partner banks' apps and online banking; named partners include Chase, Wells Fargo and American Express
- Data the provider sees
Anonymised purchase data through an ad server at the bank or hosted for it (company statement)
- Who pays, and how
Cost per served sale, or engagement-based cost per redemption or per transaction
Amex Offers
- Type
Issuer and network in one (closed loop)
- Where offers appear
Amex app and website
- Data the provider sees
Amex card transactions
- Who pays, and how
Merchant-funded
Mastercard Commerce Media (profile)
- Type
Card network
- Where offers appear
Issuer and partner channels; point-of-sale and wallets planned
- Data the provider sees
Permissioned Mastercard transaction data
- Who pays, and how
n/d (managed)
Visa Offers Platform and VMORC
- Type
Card network
- Where offers appear
Issuer and partner channels
- Data the provider sees
Visa network data; VMORC is a read-only offer repository
- Who pays, and how
n/d
Kard (to be acquired by Citi)
- Type
Rewards API and offers network for fintechs and banks
- Where offers appear
Partner apps
- Data the provider sees
Card transactions of partner cardholders
- Who pays, and how
Brands pay for verified purchases (company claim)
Fidel API
- Type
Card-linking API
- Where offers appear
Any app the developer builds
- Data the provider sees
Authorisation, clearing and refund events for linked cards on Visa, Mastercard and Amex
- Who pays, and how
n/d (not published)
Zilch ASPN
- Type
BNPL card with merchant-funded deals
- Where offers appear
Zilch app
- Data the provider sees
Zilch card transactions
- Who pays, and how
Merchants pay per sale
Table by AdSovereign, CC BY 4.0.
Three patterns stand out. The bank-owned programs (Chase, Amex) report merchant spend driven, not media revenue. The rented platform (Cardlytics) is losing partners while the banks build or buy their own engines. And the card networks are the newest entrants, selling the same unit through issuers they do not control.
Card-linked offers API: what developers connect to
A product team that wants a card linked offers API has three kinds of interface to choose from.
Network programs. Mastercard and Visa run their own offer programs. Visa Developer lists the Visa Offers Platform as a product to "create, distribute, and track personalized merchant offers", with documentation open only to authorised users (Visa Developer, accessed 9 November 2026). Visa's Merchant Offers Resource Center is a separate, read-only API that returns approved merchant offers to issuers and merchants (Visa Developer, VMORC).
Card-linking aggregators. Fidel API sits between an app and the three major networks. Its Select Transactions API sends authorisation, clearing and refund events for linked cards to the developer's server by webhook, and its Offers API acts as a qualification engine for card-linked offers (Fidel API docs, Offers). Fidel says it receives authorisation messages "typically within seconds" (company statement) (fidelapi.com, accessed 9 November 2026).
Platforms embedded in banks. Cardlytics installs an ad server and an ads manager. Its 10-K says each bank's ad server sits behind the bank's firewall or is hosted by Cardlytics for the bank. The server receives anonymised purchase data and gives each customer a unique ID, which is used to assign offers and measure redemptions (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025).
The offer object below uses only field names from Fidel's public Offers documentation, with illustrative values. It shows what a merchant actually configures.
{
"name": "10% back at Example Coffee",
"brandId": "f8bdb5e7-85c3-4acb-8a59-1b7e9218e412",
"countryCode": "USA",
"startDate": "2026-12-01T00:00:00",
"endDate": "2027-01-31T23:59:59",
"type": {
"name": "discount",
"value": 10,
"maxRewardAmount": 5
},
"minTransactionAmount": 15,
"daysOfWeek": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
"returnPeriod": 30,
"schemes": ["visa", "mastercard", "amex"],
"activation": {
"enabled": true,
"qualifiedTransactionsLimit": 1
},
"funded": {
"type": "merchant"
}
}8 of 8 rows
| "amount" gives a fixed reward in local currency; "discount" gives a percentage |
| Caps the reward on a percentage offer |
| Smallest purchase that qualifies |
| Days the offer qualifies, 0 = Sunday |
| Days between purchase and final qualification, so returns can be caught |
| Card networks that qualify: "amex", "mastercard", "visa" |
| Whether the cardholder must activate, and how many purchases each activation rewards |
| Who funds the reward: "merchant", "card-linking" or "affiliate" |
type.name, type.value
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
"amount" gives a fixed reward in local currency; "discount" gives a percentage
type.maxRewardAmount
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Caps the reward on a percentage offer
minTransactionAmount
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Smallest purchase that qualifies
daysOfWeek
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Days the offer qualifies, 0 = Sunday
returnPeriod
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Days between purchase and final qualification, so returns can be caught
schemes
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Card networks that qualify: "amex", "mastercard", "visa"
activation
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Whether the cardholder must activate, and how many purchases each activation rewards
funded.type
- What it controls (per Fidel API docs)
Who funds the reward: "merchant", "card-linking" or "affiliate"
Table by AdSovereign, CC BY 4.0.
Fidel's rules also allow only one reward per transaction; if two offers match, its platform picks the more valuable one (Fidel API docs, Offers).
How card-linked offers make money: who pays whom
The merchant pays. The cardholder gets part of that payment as a reward. The bank that shows the offer gets a share. The platform keeps the rest. Cardlytics' filings make the split visible because it reports billings (the gross amount billed to marketers), consumer incentives and partner share separately (Cardlytics Q3 2026 results).
Worked split of $100 billed, from Cardlytics' third quarter of 2026. Billings were $57.2 million. Consumer incentives were $24.3 million, partner share and other third-party costs $13.5 million, and adjusted contribution $19.4 million (Cardlytics Q3 2026 results).
3 of 3 rows
Consumer incentives | $42.5 | Cardholders, as cash back or statement credit |
Partner share and other third-party costs | $23.6 | Banks, plus media and data costs |
Adjusted contribution | $33.9 | Cardlytics, before its own delivery, sales and overhead costs |
Consumer incentives
- Amount
$42.5
- Goes to
Cardholders, as cash back or statement credit
Partner share and other third-party costs
- Amount
$23.6
- Goes to
Banks, plus media and data costs
Adjusted contribution
- Amount
$33.9
- Goes to
Cardlytics, before its own delivery, sales and overhead costs
Table by AdSovereign, CC BY 4.0.
Partner share is "a negotiated and fixed percentage" of billings less consumer incentives and some data costs (Cardlytics 10-Q, Q3 2026). The terms are bank by bank. Cardlytics says a June 2023 amendment with Chase raised the share of billings it keeps, and a July 2025 amendment extended the Chase schedule to 18 November 2028 (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025). Its top three bank partners received over 85% of all partner share in the first nine months of 2026 (10-Q, Q3 2026).
Two pricing models. Under cost per served sale, the marketer pays a percentage of all purchases made by customers who were shown the offer, whether or not they activated it. Under engagement-based pricing, the marketer pays a fixed fee for each purchase after a customer activates the offer. It either funds the reward itself (cost per redemption) or lets the platform fund it from the fee (cost per transaction) (Cardlytics 10-Q, Q3 2026).
The mix has moved toward engagement. In the third quarter of 2026, engagement-based pricing earned $21.7 million and served-based pricing $10.1 million, against $27.6 million and $18.1 million a year earlier (10-Q, Q3 2026). For a merchant, the difference matters. Served-based pricing charges for sales that might have happened anyway. Engagement-based pricing charges only after an activation, which is closer to paying for a response.
A short scenario shows the merchant's cost. A restaurant group runs 10% back, capped at $5, on engagement-based cost per redemption. A cardholder activates and spends $40. The restaurant funds the $4 reward and pays the platform its negotiated fee for that redemption. The bank's share comes out of that fee under its contract with the platform (Cardlytics 10-Q, Q3 2026).
What data moves, and what stays with the bank
The merchant does not need a customer list, and in the main programs it does not get one. It gets an offer placement, a count of activations and redemptions, and a sales report.
Inside the program, the data stays close to the issuer. Cardlytics states that its network analyses purchase data "without any personal data leaving the FI partners" and that the data it receives is anonymised (company statement). It also says it ingests about one in every two US debit and credit card transactions (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025). Card-linking providers work on tokens rather than card numbers, which keeps the offer logic outside the card-data environment.
US law sets a firm edge here. Regulation P bars a financial institution from giving a nonaffiliated third party a credit card, deposit or transaction account number for marketing. The rule has narrow exceptions, and an encrypted number is not an account number if the recipient has no way to decode it (12 CFR 1016.12). Sharing other customer data with a merchant or platform raises the notice, opt-out and service-provider questions covered in GLBA and advertising with bank data. The wider set of rules a bank's offers and ads must meet is mapped in Bank advertising rules.
Outside banks, the same offer touches consumer privacy law. A retailer or app that links cards to a loyalty account is handling purchase data on its members. The consent design for that case is in Loyalty program data in advertising.
How card-linked offers fit into financial media networks
Offers are where most banks start, because the customer opts in by activating an offer and no data has to leave the bank. Chase built its media business on offers alone and charges brands only when a customer views the offer and buys (chase.com, accessed 17 October 2026). Onsite display, offsite audiences and clean rooms come later.
The direction of travel is from rented platform to owned engine. Chase bought Figg in 2022. Bank of America did not renew its Cardlytics agreements, and the relationship ended on 16 February 2026 (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025). Cardlytics later reported that its user count fell by 43.7 million year on year, mainly because a US bank partner left (10-Q, Q3 2026). Citi's agreement to buy Kard points the same way. The architecture a bank needs to run offers in-house is in How a bank can launch a media network without moving customer data.
Closed-loop is not the same as incremental
Card-linked offers are closed-loop by design: the purchase that triggers the reward is the same record the report counts. That proves the customer bought. It does not prove the offer caused the purchase.
Incrementality needs a control group that was eligible but not shown the offer. Cardlytics describes its measurement as based on "actual purchase data" rather than models (company statement) (Cardlytics 10-K, FY2025), and Chase sells lift reports. Ask any provider how holdouts are drawn and whether lift is reported with confidence intervals. The measurement gaps of bank networks are covered in Why financial media networks struggle with measurement, and the method is a randomised holdout, not a before-and-after comparison.
FAQ
What are card-linked offers?
Which companies provide card-linked offers platforms?
Is there a card-linked offers API?
How do banks make money from card-linked offers?
Does Mastercard have a card-linked offers program?
Do merchants see my card data when I use an offer?
How this works on owned infrastructure
The question on this page is who holds the offer engine: the bank, a platform paid from billings, or a card network. Each choice decides where targeting, matching and lift measurement run, and who keeps the margin shown in the Cardlytics split. AdSovereign is designed so that a bank or loyalty owner runs the offer decisioning, the eligibility rules and the holdout measurement on its own servers, next to its token vault, and exposes only offer placements and aggregate reports to merchants. That keeps the partner share as internal margin and keeps transaction records inside the perimeter. The architecture page shows where the offer engine sits; the security page describes the data boundary it supports.
Sources
- Cardlytics, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, "Cardlytics Reports Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results" (5 November 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1666071/000162828026070992/cdlx_form8-kx2026q3xex991.htm
- Cardlytics, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026 (5 November 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1666071/000162828026071002/cdlx-20260930.htm
- Cardlytics, Form 10-K for FY2025 (4 March 2026). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1666071/000166607126000010/cdlx-20251231.htm
- Business Wire, "Chase launches Chase Media Solutions" (3 April 2024). https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240403664648/en/
- Chase Media Solutions website (accessed 17 October 2026). https://www.chase.com/mediasolutions/home
- Marketing Dive, "Mastercard makes bigger grab for commerce media dollars" (1 October 2025). https://www.marketingdive.com/news/mastercard-bigger-grab-commerce-media-dollars-new-network/761568/
- Axios, "American Express launches Amex Ads" (6 October 2025). https://www.axios.com/2025/10/06/amex-ads-american-express-media
- Citigroup, "Citi expands customer engagement and commerce media capabilities with Kard addition" (13 August 2026). https://www.citigroup.com/global/news/press-release/2026/citi-expands-customer-engagement-commerce-media-capabilities-kard-addition
- Kard, company website (accessed 9 November 2026). https://www.getkard.com/
- Visa Developer, Visa Offers Platform (accessed 9 November 2026). https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vop
More sources (6)
- Visa Developer, Visa Merchant Offers Resource Center (accessed 9 November 2026). https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vmorc
- Fidel API, Select Transactions documentation (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.fidelapi.com/docs/select/
- Fidel API, Offers documentation (accessed 9 November 2026). https://docs.fidelapi.com/docs/select/offers/
- Fidel API, company website (accessed 9 November 2026). https://fidelapi.com/
- Zilch, "Zilch opens its ASPN to third parties" (June 2023). https://www.zilch.com/news/zilch-opens-its-revolutionary-aspn-to-third-parties-across-the-globe-advancing-a-multi-trillion-dollar-payments-and-advertising-marketplace/
- Cornell LII, 12 CFR § 1016.12, limits on redisclosure of account numbers (current). https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/12/1016.12