The Story of the Founders of VEXiON cards: How We Overcame the Frustration of Paper Cards ☕🚀

Founders Meeting and The Beginnings of the Idea

My name is Jakub and together with my classmate Adam, my partner, long-time friend, and now like a brother, we decided to change the way businesses and customers interact with loyalty programs. As students in Germany, we realized that the current ways loyalty programs are used are either very outdated (ahem ahem, paper cards) or complicated (installing an app). That's why we pondered whether there could be a simpler solution to streamline how loyalty is applied in the world.

Frustration with Paper Cards

I remember when we were having coffee and I was just paying with my phone, and next to the terminal was a pile of paper loyalty cards. At that moment, I thought, "how cool would it be if I could just add that physical card directly to Apple Wallet like a credit card" (I don't want to reveal too much, but it is possible). Since I'm the type who doesn't like to carry a lot of stuff – my wallet contains just my ID, driver's license, and maybe a health insurance card, and that works perfectly for me. Paper cards are an impractical and inefficient way to collect rewards. 😅

Proposed Solution: VEXiON cards

This frustration led us to develop a digital loyalty program – VEXiON cards. Why the name VEXiON cards? That's for another day and article ;) Our vision was to create something that would simplify loyalty programs for businesses and customers alike. So, we started looking for solutions to this idea. Like everyone else, we went on Google and searched "how to add loyalty cards to Apple Wallet", "how to convert stamp paper card into digital one in Apple Wallet" and it didn't take long before we found a solution. After all, concert tickets have been added to Wallet like this for a long time, so why wouldn't it work with loyalty cards? We discovered "Loyalty Passes - Wallet". That's exactly what we needed. Nothing new or revolutionary, but just what could solve our problem. 📱✨

Why We Did It for Ourselves

You know what’s the best part? We started this because we primarily wanted to do it for ourselves 😅! After presenting the idea to a few people around us, we quickly realized that others have similar issues and they liked this solution. After all, who wants to carry around all those paper cards? No one… And so began our now 8-month journey of development, designing, brainstorming, mistakes, fixes, and much more until we reached here on November 25, 2024, when we took the final steps before launch. We launched the system at the first locations where our system is being tested, customers are registering, rewards are being claimed, stamps are being collected, and all this so that we can soon launch the system in all its glory.

Our Vision and the Future of VEXiON Cards

Our goal is not only to modernize loyalty programs and bring them into the digital age but also to reduce paper waste from the millions of paper cards that are used around the world. We want businesses to be able to easily manage their loyalty programs and for customers to have a simple and convenient way to collect rewards. We believe that with VEXiON cards we can enhance the customer experience while contributing to a more sustainable world.