Interview

In an era when loyalty programs often underdeliver and digital engagement feels transactional, one company is rebuilding the loyalty experience from the ground up and rewriting the rule book on how to engage and retain customers.

Shopr Rewards® is a groundbreaking fintech platform that redefines loyalty for the modern consumer — instant, effortless, and genuinely rewarding. By delivering real cash back the moment a purchase is made, it transforms everyday spending into meaningful value and engagement into true satisfaction. It’s also the first instant cash-back ecosystem that connects businesses and consumers in a mutually rewarding loop — where every transaction benefits both sides in real time.

We sat down with Paul Mattimoe, Co-Founder and CEO of Shopr Rewards®, to discuss what makes this model so disruptive, why it’s resonating with investors, and how it’s reshaping loyalty for a digital-first economy.

Q: Paul, what exactly is Shopr Rewards®, and how did the idea come about?

Shopr Rewards® gives consumers instant cash back when they shop, dine, or book activities with more than 325 major national brands. The keyword is instant; there’s no waiting for points to accumulate or miles to clear. The cash back reward appears in real time. It can be spent immediately within our partner network, so you can earn cash back in one store and redeem it immediately towards a purchase in another, unshackling typically siloed loyalty programs.

The idea came from watching traditional loyalty programs fail to engage users. There’s $100 Billion in loyalty rewards that go unused annually in the United States alone, resulting in $600+ Billion in lost revenue. The loyalty industry is like a leaking bucket; there’s too much friction, too many conditions, and too little reward. Customers don’t feel valued until months later — if ever.

We wanted to bridge that gap by rewarding behavior as it happens. Shopr Rewards® is instant, universal, and emotionally satisfying — a win for both consumers and the brands that serve them.

“The brands that win in the future won’t just thank customers for spending – they’ll reward them in real time and earn with them along the way.”

Q: Who are your primary customers – consumers or businesses?

Both, but our B2B2C model is what truly scales, as we can attain hundreds of thousands of users or more from a single B2B Partner rather than having to spend heavily on marketing to attract that number on a pure B2C model. We provide co-branded versions of the app that businesses distribute to their customers, employees, or members.

For example, a hotel chain might offer the app to its guests under its own branding. After leaving the hotel, every time a guest shops in their everyday life, they earn instant cash back that puts them one step closer to a repeat visit, at the same location or a different one within the same hotel chain. The hotel chain also benefits from behavioral data that was previously invisible to them, helping them curate experiences and offers they can promote through the app.

A gym brand can use Shopr Rewards® to offset monthly fees, reducing membership churn, and promote upsells such as personal trainer sessions and juice bar purchases to drive incremental revenue.

A subscription service can focus on retention by adding incremental value to its offering and benefit from our built-in referral program to organically grow its user base.

It’s the same technology with custom redemption logic and branding for each market or use case.

Q: Why do you consider Shopr Rewards® a truelly disruptive platform in the loyalty space?

Because it doesn’t just reward loyalty — it monetizes it. We haven’t just reinvented loyalty. We’ve reinvented the business model behind it.

Traditional loyalty programs cost companies money; Shopr Rewards® helps B2B Partners earn. Discounting products ultimately kills the bottom line. Every time a company slashes prices, it simply trains its customers to wait for the next deal, and therefore, it needs to discount products more often to keep momentum.

“We didn’t just reinvent loyalty. We reinvented the business modal behind it.”

Our partners don’t fund rewards from their budgets; instead, our system generates new revenue through affiliate partnerships and instantly shares most of that value with the user, who can then spend it with our B2B Partner.

It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem—no more burning cash for customer retention. Every transaction becomes a future revenue event. There’s nothing else like it!

Q: What’s the biggest challenge Shopr Rewards® had to solve to make “Instant” loyalty work?

Timing and trust.

Delivering instant cash back means we had to automate multiple affiliate and transaction confirmations, which is traditionally a multi-day process, into milliseconds. That took deep integration across APIs, real-time tracking, and payout automation.

We rebuilt that process from the ground up. Instead of waiting for batch confirmations, Shopr Rewards® uses real-time verification layers that analyze transaction metadata and authorize the reward the moment the purchase is confirmed. It’s not a rebate, it’s not a points adjustment, it’s a financial event that clears instantly, just like a card payment.

From the user’s perspective, it feels simple. But behind the scenes, it’s a very advanced fintech engine that is verifying, calculating, and crediting instantly while staying fully compliant.

Then there’s trust — because if you’re going to give users money instantly, you must be certain every transaction is legitimate and accurate. We developed proprietary fraud-detection protocols and reconciliation logic that run in the background to verify merchant eligibility and protect both the user and our business partners.

So “timing and trust” became our mantra. We had to deliver real money, instantly, but also reliably and compliantly. Balancing those two forces is what makes Shopr Rewards® not just a marketing tool, but a financial-grade loyalty platform.

That’s why we describe Shopr Rewards® as fintech disguised as loyalty.

Q: How does this innovation create opportunities for entrepreneurs or small businesses?

Traditionally, small businesses cannot afford sophisticated loyalty systems. They are locked out by cost and complexity.

Shopr Rewards® changes that. Our platform lets a business, even a startup, launch a customized, co-branded rewards app, instantly connecting to 325+ major merchants. They can drive loyalty and generate future transactional income from day one.

For entrepreneurs, it’s not just a loyalty solution — it’s a new revenue model that can sit on top of almost any business.

Q: How does AI play a role in Shopr Rewards® growth strategy?

AI powers personalization and prediction and will continue to play a substantial role in every new feature we add as we grow.

We currently use AI to analyze transaction behavior and push timely, relevant offers that increase engagement — like suggesting a dining deal on Friday night or a travel discount before a holiday based on smart timing.

Our next evolution is predictive loyalty, where we will be anticipating the next purchase and serving recommendations before the user even makes it. That’s where true disruption begins, when loyalty starts leading behavior, not following it.

Q: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs building in fintech or loyalty today?

Focus on velocity over volume. Don’t try to build everything — build the part that moves value faster.

In our case, that meant eliminating the delay between purchase and reward. Every entrepreneur should ask, “What’s slowing my customer down?” and then remove that friction completely.

Also, never underestimate partnerships. We built Shopr Rewards® not just to be used, but to be integrated. Collaboration scales faster than competition.

Q: How have consumers responded to instant cash back versus traditional points?

The difference is night and day. People love seeing immediate results; it creates a powerful psychological trigger.

In our early user onboarding, we’ve recorded 4–5x higher engagement and 70%+ monthly retention compared to points-based systems. It’s the same psychology that makes mobile gaming so sticky, except here, the reward is real money.

Instant value keeps users coming back because they feel rewarded every time they shop.

Q: Tell us about your investor traction.

So far, we’ve raised $1.3 million of a $5 million seed round to accelerate product rollouts and partner integrations.

With a post-money valuation of $40 million, Shopr Rewards® is now entering an accelerated growth phase. As business development gains momentum with some high-caliber clients, we anticipate achieving an increased valuation sooner than expected — positioning us to pursue a larger investment round aimed at rapid scale as our foundational infrastructure is fully in place.

Interest has been strong because we combine scalability, profitability, and cross-industry relevance. We’re not chasing a single vertical; we’re powering the loyalty backbone for many.

Q: What’s next for 2026 and beyond?

We are hyper-focused on developing some additional features that are even more game-changing than our original launch version, and on finding the right B2B partners with large, engaged customer bases.

We are strengthening our AI integration to further personalize offers and predict purchasing behavior, and connecting with more merchants and creating strategic partnerships with additional benefits providers.

Another area of focus is to expand our mobile wallet integrations to enable crypto exchange and bilateral transfers of cash to points, and points to cash – providing limitless possibilities of where to spend and redeem.

As further investment is secured, we will rapidly scale towards a likely IPO or private sale.

Our long-term vision for the company is to have it become the monetization layer for loyalty, quietly powering transactions behind the scenes in dozens of industries.