Formerly | Alliance Data Systems Corporation (1996–2022) |
---|---|
Company type | Public |
Industry | financial services |
Founded | April 22, 1983 |
Headquarters | , U.S. |
Area served |
|
Key people | Ralph Andretta (president & CEO) |
Products | Credit cards |
Revenue | US$4.521 billion (2020) |
US$888.4 million (2020) | |
US$213.7 million (2020) | |
Total assets | US$22.547 billion (2020) |
Total equity | US$1.521 billion (2020) |
Number of employees | ~8,000 worldwide (2023) |
Subsidiaries |
|
Website | breadfinancial |
Footnotes /references [1] |
Bread Financial Holdings, Inc. is an American publicly-traded provider of loyalty and marketing services, such as private label credit cards, coalition loyalty programs, and direct marketing, derived from the capture and analysis of transaction-rich data.
Alliance Data was formed from the December 1996 merger of two entities: J.C. Penney's credit card processing unit and The Limited's credit card bank operation, named World Financial Network National Bank. [2]
In August 1998, Alliance Data acquired LoyaltyOne, then-branded The Loyalty Group Canada, for $250 million. [3] The deal gave Alliance Data two valuable business enhancements, Canada's Air Miles Rewards Program and the company behind the popular Air Miles program, LoyaltyOne. [4]
In 2001, Alliance Data went public. [5]
In May 2007, The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, announced plans to acquire Alliance Data. [6] [7] In April 2008, Alliance Data terminated the merger agreement with Blackstone Affiliates. [8] [9]
Ed Heffernan was promoted to president and CEO of Alliance Data in February 2009, after being with the company since 1998. [10] [11] [12]
On June 7, 2019, Ed Heffernan resigned as CEO of Alliance Data and was replaced by Melisa Miller, who previously ran Alliance Data's Card Services division. This change in leadership effectively moved Alliance Data's Headquarters from Plano, Texas, to Columbus, Ohio. [13]
Melisa Miller held the role for roughly 6 months before being replaced by former CITI executive Ralph Andretta. In 2019, Alliance Data opened its first international office in Bangalore, India. [14]
In November 2021, Alliance Data completed the separation of its LoyaltyOne segment, consisting of the Canadian AIR MILES Reward Program and Netherlands-based BrandLoyalty businesses, into an independent, publicly traded company, Loyalty Ventures Inc. [15] In March 2022, Alliance Data rebranded as Bread Financial as part of an effort to streamline their business model into a tech-forward financial services company providing a wider range of financial options. [15] [16]
Card Services is a provider of integrated credit and marketing services including private label, co-branded and commercial credit card programs. Alliance Data Card Services manages over 135 [17] card programs for retail brands such as Victoria’s Secret, J.Crew, Eddie Bauer, Buckle, HSN, Pottery Barn, Pier 1 Imports, Lexus, Toyota, Williams Sonoma and Wayfair among many others. [18]
In 2011, Alliance Data, in partnership with NICE Systems, was honored with the Operational Leadership Award for its customer care centers by Ventana Research. [19]
Alliance Data Card Services maintains two banks to manage the funding and receivables for its clients' credit programs. In September 2012, the banks rebranded their names from WFNNB (World Financial Network [National] Bank) and WFCB (World Financial Capital Bank) to both operate under the Comenity name, as Comenity Bank and Comenity Capital Bank, respectively. [20]
LoyaltyOne, located in Canada, provides loyalty marketing programs for North American brands in the retail, financial services, grocery, petroleum, travel, and hospitality industries.
Five businesses make up the LoyaltyOne: Air Miles national reward program, in which approximately two-thirds of Canadian households participate; [21] Colloquy; LoyaltyOne Consulting; Precima; and Squareknot.
Hewitt Associates named LoyaltyOne in their "2014 List of the 50 Best Employers in Canada." [22]
Epsilon provides a broad range of loyalty marketing services spanning database marketing, direct mail, email marketing, web development, loyalty programs, analytics, data services, strategic consulting, and creative services, among others.
Ad Age has ranked Epsilon among the top marketing services firms and direct marketing agencies for several years, and Epsilon has the distinction as being the Top US Agency From All Disciplines and Top US CRM/Direct Marketing Agencies for 2012. [23] [24] [25] [26] It sends billions of permission-based emails every year. [27] Acquired by Epsilon in 2011, [28] Aspen Marketing Services is a marketing services agency headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, [29] with locations in the United States and Canada. In 2012, Epsilon reached an agreement to acquire the Hyper Marketing ("HMI") group of companies, the largest privately held digital marketing services agencies in the United States, for about $460 million.
In March 2011, Epsilon detected unauthorized access to its email database, resulting in the theft of email addresses of its clients' customers. [30] [31] [32]
In late February 2013, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies, including Epsilon, to help reshape its targeted advertising strategy. [33]
Because of Epsilon's growth over the past several years, the company relocated its headquarters to the former Nokia regional headquarters space in Las Colinas, Texas, near Dallas. [34] [35]
In March 2014, 60 Minutes interviewed Bryan Kennedy, chairman and CEO of Epsilon, as part of its segment, "The Data Brokers: Selling Your Personal Information". [36]
In April 2019, Publicis Groupe announced it would be acquiring Epsilon for $4.4 billion. This was the second biggest deal in the history of advertising, behind only Dentsu's $5 billion acquisition of Aegis Group in 2012. [37]
In 2010 Epsilon failed to heed warnings to secure data. [38] In March 2011 it was discovered that email addresses from customers of 50 client companies were stolen. [38] The company quickly notified the public about the breach. [39] In June 2011 company executives were called before Congress to answer questions about the security breach. [40]
In October 2020, Alliance Data launched Enhanced Digital Suite. [41]
In October 2020, Alliance Data selected Fiserv for Credit Processing Services. [42]
In 2021, Alliance Data invested $100M in digital technologies to expand consumer credit options beyond retail deals and cards. [43]
In April 2022, Bread Financial partnered with American Express and launched the Bread Cashback American Express Credit Card. [44] [45]
A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. A loyalty program typically involves the operator of a particular program set up an account for a customer of a business associated with the scheme, and then issue to the customer a loyalty card which may be a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, that identifies the cardholder as a participant in the program. Cards may have a barcode or magstripe to more easily allow for scanning, although some are chip cards or proximity cards.
Sobeys Inc. is a national supermarket chain in Canada with over 1,500 stores operating under a variety of banners. Headquartered in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, it operates stores in all ten provinces and accumulated sales of more than C$25.1 billion in the fiscal 2019 operating year. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Empire Company Limited, a Canadian business conglomerate.
Mastercard Inc. is the second-largest payment-technology corporation worldwide. It offers a range of payment transaction processing and other related-payment services. Its headquarters are in Purchase, New York. Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card-issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the Mastercard-brand debit, credit and prepaid cards to make purchases. Mastercard has been publicly traded since 2006.
Publicis Sapient is a global digital transformation consulting company and the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe with 20,000 people and over 50 offices worldwide. It was originally established as Sapient in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990. In 2015, Sapient became an independent subsidiary of French multinational advertising firm Publicis, following a deal worth US$3.7 billion. It remains headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and as of February 2015, the leadership is retained.
Barclaycard is a brand for credit cards of Barclays PLC. As of 2010, Barclays had over ten million customers in the United Kingdom.
GE Capital was the financial services division of General Electric. Its various units were sold between 2013 and 2021, including the notable spin-off of the North American consumer finance division as Synchrony Financial. Ultimately, only one division of the company remained, GE Energy Financial Services, which was transferred to GE Vernova when General Electric was broken up.
International Data Group is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.'s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technology, and insights that help create and sustain relationships between businesses.
Capital One Financial Corporation is an American bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, banking, and savings accounts, headquartered in McLean, Virginia with operations primarily in the United States. It is the 12th largest bank in the United States by total assets as of 2022, the third largest issuer of Visa and Mastercard credit cards, and one of the largest car finance companies in the United States.
Intuit Inc. is an American multinational business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint, the small business accounting program QuickBooks, the credit monitoring service Credit Karma, and email marketing platform Mailchimp. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States.
Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. One of the oldest and largest marketing and communications companies in the world, it is headquartered in Paris.
CJ is an online advertising company owned by Publicis Groupe operating in the affiliate marketing industry, which operates worldwide. The corporate headquarters is in Santa Barbara, California, and there are offices in Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, New York, NY, Los Angeles, CA, Agoura Hills, CA, and Needham, MA in the US, and in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, and India.
Heartland Payment Systems, Inc. is a U.S.-based payment processing and technology provider. Founded in 1997, Heartland Payment Systems' last headquarters were in Princeton, New Jersey. An acquisition by Global Payments, expected to be worth $3.8 billion or $4.3 billion was finalized on April 25, 2016.
Loyalty marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company focuses on growing and retaining existing customers through incentives. Branding, product marketing, and loyalty marketing all form part of the customer proposition – the subjective assessment by the customer of whether to purchase a brand or not based on the integrated combination of the value they receive from each of these marketing disciplines.
Publicis New York is an American advertising agency based in New York City. It was founded in 1993 and has 2,000 employees with offices in New York, Seattle, Toronto, and Montreal. Publicis acquired the Kaplan Thaler Group in 2012. The agency created the Aflac duck, Herbal Essences Totally Organic Experience, Continental Airlines “Work Hard. Fly Right.", and Swiffer Sweeper campaigns.
Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS) is an American multinational corporation which offers a wide range of financial products and services. FIS is most known for its development of Financial Technology, or FinTech, and as of Q2 2020 it offers its solutions in three primary segments: Merchant Solutions, Banking Solutions, and Capital Market Solutions. Annually, FIS facilitates the movement of roughly $9 trillion through the processing of approximately 75 billion transactions in service to more than 20,000 clients around the globe.
Velti is a mobile marketing company offering its services to mobile operators and brands. The company was founded in 2001, went public in London in 2006 and on NASDAQ in 2011. In 2013 Blackstone, acquired the assets of Velti and the company was taken private.
Constant Contact, Inc. is an online marketing company, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with additional offices in Loveland, Colorado; and New York, New York.
LoyaltyOne, Co. provides loyalty marketing services to enterprises in retail, financial services, grocery, petroleum retail, travel, and hospitality sectors globally. Under the Alliance Data umbrella, it offers services in coalition loyalty programs, analytics and retail solutions, loyalty consulting and customer analytics.
SparkBase, LLC was a stored-value and gift card transaction processor located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States from 2004 to 2016. It provided private-label, stored-value, specialty gift cards, customer loyalty, and community rewards programs to Independent Sales Organizations. ISOs then sold these gift and loyalty products to merchant customers along with credit card services and processing equipment.
Aimia Inc. is an investment holding company with a focus on long-term investments in public and private companies, on a global basis, through controlling or minority stakes, and is based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is publicly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)