What is points portability?
Points portability is the guarantee that a merchant’s rewards balance remains their property even if their payment provider relationship changes. Portable points are protected at the platform level — above any single ISO, agent, or processor — so switching providers never zeroes a balance.
In Prestige Rewards, points never expire and remain the merchant’s property even if their payment provider changes. Both halves of that sentence are structural, not policy: the balance is a pre-funded liability held at the platform, so there is no mechanism by which a provider’s departure could erase it.
Why do most loyalty programs fail this test?
Because forfeiture is their business model. Most loyalty economics quietly depend on breakage — points that expire or are abandoned before redemption. A program funded by future budgets needs points to die; a program funded by a reserve does not.
Rewards you can lose for switching aren’t rewards — they’re a leash. A merchant who stays only because leaving destroys their balance hasn’t been retained; they’ve been held hostage, and they know it.
Doesn’t portability undermine retention?
No — it strengthens the honest kind. Providers offering a portable program retain merchants through ongoing earning (the next reward they’re working toward), not through threatened forfeiture. That is a better story to sell, a better relationship to keep, and it removes the single most common objection a skeptical merchant raises: “what happens to my points if I leave?”
The answer — “they stay yours” — is disarming precisely because almost no one else can say it.