It's tough being loyal to loyalty cards:
Know-it-all plastic for the need-it-all shopper must offer privacy

After braving the long line at Starbucks, Louise finally gets to order her double-tall non-fat iced latte. She digs into her wallet for her loyalty card, buried somewhere between her Chapters card, her Safeway card, her Blenz card, her Airmiles, Banyen Books, and Escents cards. Weighing the lure of a free latte against the prospect of public stoning, she closes her wallet and walks away, caffeinated but defeated. We've all been trapped in lines behind a woman like Louise. Heck, most of us have been Louise. We've suffered the anguish of lost freebies, and the humiliation of publicly exhuming our pockets or purses in pursuit of an elusive loyalty card.

But with a little ingenuity and a couple of guarantees, we could happily empty our wallets. Instead, we could carry a single integrated loyalty card. Let's call it the integraCard.

Family integraCards could pool all your household points so you get your free airline ticket even faster.

The biggest obstacle to an integraCard system is not economic, but social.

Customers won't subscribe to a system that tracks all their purchases unless that system offers strict privacy guarantees.

In fact, that guarantee would be the most important value provided by integraCard.

All too often, loyalty programs cheat customers out of the full market value of their data.

The information I provide to Chapters, for example, in the form of knowledge about my reading habits and personal interests, far exceeds the paltry 10-per-cent discount I receive in return. As for what all those loyalty programs do with their data -- well, who has time to read the fine print on each individual agreement?

Smart companies are increasingly aware that privacy is a core value in their customer relationships.

When I went to San Francisco for a recent conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, I noticed that the only group outnumbering the computer geeks was the assortment of corporate privacy czars.

But the intensifying spotlight on consumer privacy offers business opportunities as well as market pitfalls. An integraCard system, offering not only convenience but a third-party guarantee of value for data, is one such opportunity.

A program like integraCard could solve the practical problem of the loyalty card explosion. But for market-generated solutions to work, businesses have to heed consumer demands for privacy protection.

Louise strides into Starbucks, integraCard in hand. She hands the card to the clerk, simultaneously placing, paying for, and collecting points on her regular order of a double espresso. (In the future, nobody will drink double-tall non-fat iced lattes.) Next she ducks into Duthie's, where a single swipe of her card generates a list of customized book recommendations. She picks out a novel from the list; when she pays with her integracard her accumulated points automatically give her a $5 discount.

She returns home and settles down with her book, where she remains peacefully undisturbed by telemarketers.