Originally Posted by
rkjflyer1
Indeed, it's a miracle how they've managed to stay in business all these years. Who actually uses them for mileage xfers?
Points International, Ltd. receives a large portion of their revenue comes from services they provide to mileage programs for sales and member-to-member internal transfers of miles/points and other "e-commerce services". The margin is probably higher on points.com than on those services they provide to programs, but it's not the only reason they exist.
From their annual report, they provide a number of services to programs:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....&p=irol-irhome
Buy and Gift facilitates the online sale and gift
of miles, points and other loyalty program
currencies;
Transfer facilitates the transfer of loyalty
program currencies among multiple accounts;
Corporate facilitates the sale of loyalty
program currencies to corporate customers;
Elite facilitates the online sale of elite-tier
status to members of loyalty programs;
AirIncentives facilitates the online sale of
several airline loyalty program currencies to third
parties that then are able to offer airline miles as
incentives to their customers and suppliers;
Systems Design custom applications
developed for select large loyalty program
partners;
Integrate functions as a common platform to
process transactions among third-party loyalty
programs in order to simplify and automate a
complex and resource-intensive process with a
single integration;
Auction via a partnership with Truition, an
industry leader in on-demand ecommerce
solutions, this service facilitates the ability for
programs to offer mileage or point based
auctions to their members; and
Earn Malls an online shopping mall platform
where affiliate commissions are partly used to
fund an extra incentive of miles or points for a
loyalty programs members.