Read time 4 mins
Author Sophia 🌱
If 2025 was the year digital rewards found their stride, 2026 is the year they start to lead.
Across loyalty, fintech, and payments, the lines between earning, spending, and rewarding continue to blur. Every signal points to one clear shift: digital value is no longer a perk. It’s becoming core to how brands grow, how consumers engage, and how businesses operate.
To look ahead with clarity, we asked our senior leadership team to share their predictions for the year to come. Their views span brand, product, technology, people, and growth, and together they paint a picture of a market that’s accelerating fast, with rewards moving from the edges of strategy to the centre.
Alex Preece, CEO and Co-Founder
As loyalty and fintech ecosystems mature across borders, digital gift cards will move beyond simple incentives. Alex sees them becoming a strategic lever for global growth - a way for brands and buyers to acquire, reward, and retain customers at scale in every market.
In 2026, digital value becomes connective tissue. It bridges brands and consumers across regions, currencies, and channels, and the businesses that embrace this shift will turn rewards into an engine for deeper engagement and long-term loyalty.
Bill Warshauer, Chief Revenue Officer
Bill predicts a clear divide in 2026: growth for the businesses that put consumers at the centre of what we’re calling “The Power Triangle” - the connection between brands, buyers, and consumers.
When rewards offer real choice, loyalty stops being transactional; it becomes meaningful. Companies that build simple, flexible, high-value reward experiences will create measurable impact for everyone in the chain.
Hannah Dempster, Chief Marketing Officer
Hannah believes 2026 will mark a turning point in how marketers view gift cards, particularly in the B2C affiliate space. Budgets will start to shift as marketers recognise gift cards as one of the most efficient and measurable tools for acquisition and retention.
In 2026, affiliate marketers will increasingly redirect spend toward gift cards because of the clear value they deliver - driving conversion, supporting repeat behaviour, and creating value that customers actually want. At the same time, marketing leaders will stop treating gift cards as a bolt-on tactic. Instead, they’ll become a core performance channel that drives incremental revenue, deepens loyalty, and opens the door to new partnerships.
The brands that make this shift early will move faster than the market. They’ll build stronger customer relationships while gaining a clear advantage in how they acquire and retain customers.
David Wall, Chief Commercial Officer
David sees 2026 as the year collaboration moves from nice-to-have to essential across the gift card, reward, and incentive ecosystem, with growth driven by brands and buyers working together more deliberately to unlock shared value.
Brands will lean on partners who can prove impact, from acquisition and loyalty to measurable incremental revenue. Buyers, in turn, will prioritise sustainable relationships that offer broad catalogues, flexible multi-choice experiences, and strong commercial returns.
Promotions will play a bigger role too, especially targeted, time-bound, and added-value campaigns that create incremental lift for brands and compelling engagement moments for buyers. The organisations that win will be those that treat rewards and promotions as co-created growth levers, which means sharing data, aligning incentives, and working in true partnership to deliver meaningful returns on both sides.
David Kavanagh, Chief Technology Officer
David’s view of 2026 is refreshingly simple: the winners won’t be the platforms shouting the loudest about innovation. They’ll be the ones running with “boring reliability” - always on, always fast, and powered behind the scenes by automation, AI, and intelligent data.
The platforms that get this right will set the foundation that the whole industry builds on. Reliable rails make space for creativity on top.
Hanna Smith, Chief People Officer
Hanna sees 2026 as the year people strategy becomes a clear commercial differentiator, especially for service providers like Tillo, where success relies on trusted, long-term relationships.
Attracting great people will always matter, but keeping them is what builds real strength. When teams stay, knowledge grows, customer relationships deepen, and service becomes consistent in a way that competitors can’t easily replicate.
In 2026, companies will need to match rewards with expectations. That means fair pay, real development, and cultures where people want to stay for the long run. The providers who invest in stable, experienced teams will create the reliability and continuity that buyers and brands value most, because in a relationship-driven industry, people are the foundation of every great partnership.
Jason Silverstein, Group COO
Jason predicts that 2026 is the year tokenization finally moves from “early promise” to everyday use. The tech has been ready for years; consumer behaviour is the missing piece.
That shift will be sparked in the US by open-loop rewards that slot neatly into digital wallets. When people can earn and use rewards as easily as tapping their phone, adoption will jump. And once it does, wallets will become a central channel for how rewards are delivered and used.
Katie Cannon, Chief Brand Partnerships Officer
Katie predicts that in 2026, the strongest gift card and rewards programmes will move beyond one-off transactions and become fully integrated brand experiences.
Data will play a bigger role as a strategic growth lever, helping brands understand behaviour, shape more relevant customer journeys, and create value over time rather than at a single moment. Rewards will no longer sit on the sidelines. They’ll be embedded into how brands engage, personalise, and build lasting relationships with their customers.
Chris Forlano, Chief Product Officer
Chris sees 2026 as a turning point. A year where momentum compounds and Tillo goes through the looking glass from profitable scale-up to rapid growth.
By harnessing collaboration, targeted insights, and a measured use of AI, teams will move faster, launch new products, expand into new markets, and unlock new ways for our buyers and brands to earn value. The result is not just innovation for its own sake, but sustained revenue growth that pushes well beyond existing targets.
Across all perspectives, one theme stands out: 2026 is the year digital rewards become integrated into how people live, spend, and engage. From global ecosystems to consumer behaviour, from platform reliability to talent retention, the companies that win will be the ones that offer choice, deliver value, and remove friction at every step.
