Card-linked offer

A card-linked offer is a discount or cash-back reward that a bank or payments company attaches to a customer's card, targeted on transaction history and paid automatically when the customer buys with that card.

The customer sees the offer in a bank app, website or email, activates it with a tap, and shops as usual. The issuer or card network spots the qualifying transaction, credits the reward and bills the merchant. No coupon code is needed.

Card-linked offers are the main product of financial media networks. The IAB's July 2025 commerce media explainer lists banks, card issuers and fintechs among commerce media sellers, with credit card offers as a core use case. It cites an eMarketer forecast of $1.5 billion in financial services commerce media ad spending for 2026 (IAB, July 2025).

Measurement is closed-loop by design: the issuer sees both the exposure and the purchase, so attribution is a lookup. Whether the purchase would have happened anyway is the harder question, answered with holdout tests. Merchants like the model because payment follows the sale. Banks like it because customer data stay inside the bank, and the merchant receives results, not card records.

Example: Chase Media Solutions says its Chase Offers drove $11.2 billion in spend to participating merchants in 2025 and averaged 2.2 billion offer views a month. Brands are charged only when a customer views a campaign and then makes a purchase. These are company claims (Chase, accessed 9 November 2026).

Related terms: financial media network, commerce media network, closed-loop measurement, CPA, incrementality.

Authoritative source: IAB, "Defining Commerce Media and Its Ecosystem" (July 2025).

Read the full guide: Card-linked offers explained.