Wildfire and Badge Push 50,000 Merchants' Rewards Into Mobile Wallets

Wildfire Systems' network of more than 50,000 merchants will deliver cashback offers directly into Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet under a partnership announced at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas. The deal pairs Wildfire's loyalty and merchant-offer platform with Badge's mobile wallet infrastructure. Together the companies aim to make wallet-based rewards a standard channel for both online and in-store purchases.

For marketers, the core appeal is reach without new build. Consumers add a rewards pass to their wallet, and the pass then surfaces personalized cashback and savings offers from Wildfire's merchant network. Offers update automatically as deals change or new ones become relevant. Push notifications alert shoppers when new offers appear, and location-aware reminders fire when a shopper is near a participating merchant's physical store. At checkout — online or in store — the offer is prepared and presented in the wallet.

Who carries the integration burden?

Not the merchant. Wildfire's platform handles attribution and tracking on the back end. Neither the merchant nor the loyalty program operator needs to build separate infrastructure to support wallet-based offers, which lowers the barrier for retailers that want wallet presence but lack the engineering budget for it.

The system connects the payment moment to the rewards program. For online purchases, the offer appears in the wallet app and is applied at checkout. For in-store purchases, the same wallet a consumer taps to pay also carries the relevant cashback offer.

Wildfire CEO Jordan Glazier framed the deal as distribution for existing programs. "Our partnership with Badge gives clients a way to extend their existing rewards programs into mobile wallets, meeting their customers where they are to discover and use offers," Glazier said in a written statement. "In turn, our merchant network gives Badge's clients a steady stream of relevant offers to put in front of their customers."

What do the two companies bring?

Wildfire is a commerce intelligence platform providing retail media and rewards program services for financial services and technology companies. Visa, Citi and RBC are among its clients. Its merchant roster includes Best Buy, Macy's and Ulta Beauty. In Digital Commerce 360's Top 1000 Database, which tracks North America's largest online retailers by annual ecommerce sales, Macy's ranks No. 18, Ulta Beauty ranks No. 37 and Best Buy ranks No. 8.

Badge, for its part, makes mobile wallets programmable to drive engagement and sales. Badge CEO Eric Senn positioned the partnership around what wallets can do after the tap. "The next evolution of mobile wallets is about what happens beyond the transaction," Senn said. "By combining our technology with Wildfire's merchant offer network, we can help our clients put relevant savings opportunities directly into consumers' hands, whether they're shopping online or walking into a store."

Why it matters for marketers

The partnership extends rewards programs into payment tools shoppers already use daily, rather than requiring a separate app download. For brands like Best Buy, Macy's and Ulta Beauty, it puts cashback offers into the same wallet a consumer opens to pay — closing the gap between offer discovery and purchase completion across digital and physical retail.

With Visa, Citi and RBC already on Wildfire's client list, the wallet channel gives financial services and technology companies a new way to distribute merchant-funded rewards at scale.