Points, personalisation and innovation: How industry leaders are redefining loyalty

The 2026 Asia Pacific Loyalty Awards, hosted by the Australian Loyalty Association, recently recognised the most innovative and effective loyalty programs across Asia Pacific. 

In the week following the event, we asked several loyalty leaders and finalists: What does the next phase of AI-powered personalisation and loyalty look like?

Dean Enticott, Head of Loyalty & CRM, Adairs

Personalisation and loyalty have always moved together, and AI is now taking them to a new level. For years, brands have focused on delivering the right message to the right customer at the right moment.

The next evolution goes further, pairing the right message with the right incentive, one that feels intuitive for the customer and commercially smart for the business. With tools like spend-propensity models and AI-driven offer engines, brands can create experiences that feel more tailored, more timely and more rewarding than ever before.

Bronwyn Barberel, Head of Loyalty, Z Energy

There are some really interesting efficiency gains the loyalty industry stood to benefit from thanks to AI and data. However, I think we need to be really careful that we're not looking for technology to solve things. 

We actually still need to make business decisions and really clear business goals rather than have technology drive our decisions about what we're doing. There's some really neat efficiencies but we need to be driving that from a business point of view first.

Jonathan Reeve, Regional Sales Director, ANZ, Eagle Eye

The biggest shift is moving from segmentation to true 1:1 personalisation. Traditional loyalty programmes group customers into cohorts and push offers to those groups. AI changes that model.

With AI, brands can analyse a customer's purchase history, behaviour and preferences in real time and generate offers that are genuinely individual. Leading global examples are Carrefour and Tesco, both of which offer members completely personalised challenge offers, multi-step continuity offers where the product, reward and spend threshold are all tailored to the individual.

The next phase of loyalty is the end of segmentation as the primary tool. Every customer becomes a category of one, and AI is what makes that possible at scale.

Brendan Woodward, Senior Manager - Business Development & Partnerships, Transurban

The next phase of AI‑powered loyalty will be defined by continuous relevance at scale, not novelty. AI's role is to ensure that offers consistently sit at the intersection of member intent and commercial ROI, evolving in real time as behaviours, preferences, and market conditions change.

The future of AI in loyalty is not more offers, it's better offers, delivered only when they matter.

Today, many personalisation engines still get relevance wrong, relying too heavily on static segments or blunt rules. The next generation will be adaptive, learning from every interaction to refine what is shown, when it's shown, and even whether it should be shown at all. This protects customer trust while maximizing partner outcomes.

When AI gets relevance right, loyalty feels effortless; when it gets it wrong, it accelerates disengagement.

Critically, the most effective AI‑driven loyalty experiences will be largely invisible to customers. Rather than showcasing technology, they will simply make the program feel intuitive, timely, and respectful of the customer's time.

The best AI‑powered loyalty won't feel like technology, it will feel like the program just understands you.

AI will also play a central role in reducing friction, streamlining redemption journeys, predicting optimal moments to engage, and ensuring that loyalty programs remain commercially sustainable for partners over time.

AI becomes the engine that keeps loyalty relevant, continuously optimising value for members while protecting ROI for partners.

In this next phase, AI doesn't replace loyalty strategy; it operationalises it turning relevance, value, and trust into something that can be delivered consistently, at scale, and over the long term.

Sarah Richardson, Advisory Board Chair, Australian Loyalty Association

Across this year's awards, it's clear loyalty in 2026 is being defined by experience, not just incentives. The leading programs are those delivering seamless, end-to-end customer journeys - across digital, in-store and partner ecosystems - while creating genuine emotional engagement and measurable commercial impact.

What's emerging strongly is the shift toward sophisticated, AI-driven personalisation at scale. The best programs are using data and technology not just to segment audiences, but to deliver truly individualised experiences, optimise engagement across multiple channels and drive directly attributable results.

The next phase of loyalty is being shaped by intelligent, connected ecosystems - where AI, digital technology, gamification and sustainability initiatives all play a role. The programs recognised this year demonstrate how loyalty is becoming a core strategic capability, driving customer experience, brand differentiation and long-term growth.