Gift Cards As Payment Rails with Alex Preece, CEO & Co-Founder of Tillo | Episode 485 - Leaders In Payments

Topics in this episode

fintech loyalty payments gift gift cards

Episode notes

Gift cards have a branding problem and it’s costing the payments world a big idea. Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder of Tillo , joins us to make the case that gift cards aren’t really “gifts” at all. They’re programmable stored value, a modern redemption rail that can sit inside bank apps, fintech wallets, cashback programs, employee rewards, refunds, and payouts. Once you see them as a payment instrument, the market looks a lot less like novelty and a lot more like infrastructure. We dig into how Tillo built a two-sided marketplace that connects thousands of retail brands with the businesses that want to reward customers and employees. Alex explains why a single API matters in a fragmented global ecosystem, what it takes to support multi-country catalogs, and how better tooling and transparency can make brands more confident partners. We also talk about a surprising insight: most volume is self-use, not gifting, because people are optimizing everyday spending by converting earned value into higher-impact rewards.

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