Mastercard (NYSE: MA) today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire SessionM, a U.S.-based technology company. SessionM’s customer engagement and loyalty platform empowers the world’s most innovative brands—including retailers, airlines, restaurants and CPG companies—to forge stronger and more profitable consumer relationships.
The addition of SessionM will enhance Mastercard’s ability to help brands around the world deliver personalized, real-time offers and comprehensive campaign measurement based on robust, data-driven insights. Mastercard is constantly innovating and investing to bring fresh value to brands globally—helping them build and enhance their customer relationships and, ultimately, grow their business.
“Consumers’ expectations about their experiences with brands are changing,” said Francis Hondal, president, loyalty and engagement at Mastercard. “We believe that the future of loyalty needs to be re-imagined to enable seamless digital experiences, and SessionM’s consumer-centric capabilities will help us broaden our value to marketers across sectors in exciting new ways.”
Many businesses are seeking to reinvent their loyalty programs to better serve increasingly digital consumers. SessionM helps brands create and manage consumer engagement and loyalty programs with industry-leading technology that powers a complete loyalty solution — from data management to campaign execution to program measurement.
“SessionM shares Mastercard’s commitment to creating experiences that drive lasting loyalty and meaningful, impactful customer engagement,” said Lars Albright, co-founder and CEO of SessionM. “We look forward to joining the Mastercard family and to bringing our innovative technology to even more customers in more places around the globe.”
Over the past decade, Mastercard has made a number of investments to advance its data-driven services for retailers and other brands. This includes the acquisition of Applied Predictive Technologies, a test and learn analytics tool that allows brands to prove the real impact of marketing, product and other decisions. Mastercard has also expanded its market-leading consulting program and enhanced its marketing services, executing omnichannel campaigns on behalf of customers.
“With our suite of data-driven services, we aim to help our customers end to end – from advice to execution and everything in between,” said Kevin Stanton, chief services officer, Mastercard. “Our complementary technology and teams will help brands drive greater loyalty with both proprietary and card-based programs—reinforcing Mastercard as their partner of choice.”
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed and the transaction is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter.
