64% of Gen Z consumers in the UK and 55% in the US are already deploying AI tools to navigate and maximise loyalty programme rewards. 46% of US shoppers and 50% of UK shoppers use AI to manage grocery spending against inflation. Across all demographics, more than a third of consumers, 35% in the US, 36% in the UK, actively research loyalty benefits using AI.
The grocery detail is the one that should get the most attention. The consumer using AI to extract maximum value from a grocery loyalty programme is not engaged with the brand. They are playing the system. They have outsourced their loyalty programme interaction to a tool that finds the optimal redemption path, tracks when offers expire, and identifies which purchases maximise point accumulation.
The Loyalty Programme Was Designed for a Different Kind of Customer
The standard loyalty programme model was designed around a consumer who participates casually, who forgets about their points, who occasionally gets a redemption email and feels good about their balance, and who through the friction of manual engagement develops a habit of returning to the brand. The friction was a feature. Friction created the illusion of effortful participation that made the reward feel earned.
AI eliminates that friction entirely. The consumer who has set up an AI agent to manage their loyalty across multiple programmes is receiving optimised outputs from a system that treats every loyalty programme as a resource extraction problem.
This connects directly to the UK loyalty disengagement data we covered in the HyperFinity piece published today: 52% of British shoppers are less loyal to retailers than three years ago, 61% of loyalty programme members feel no different from a regular customer, and 55% cite irrelevant offers as their primary frustration.
The Comarch data adds a dimension the HyperFinity data only implied: the shoppers who are most engaged with loyalty programmes right now are engaged with them as optimisation problems, not as brand relationships.
The NPS Gap That Shows What Good Looks Like
Top-tier loyalty programmes see a Net Promoter Score increase of 20 points in the UK and 14 points in the US compared to lower-performing competitors. 76% of active members in top US programmes take concrete actions to reinforce brand engagement, such as deliberately choosing the brand, increasing their spending, or advocating for it.
The NPS gap shows that loyalty programmes can work. The difference between a top-tier programme and a lower-performing one is not primarily the earn rate or the redemption threshold. It is whether the programme delivers value that the consumer recognises as relevant and worthwhile without having to work for it.
If the programme is not surfacing relevant offers automatically, a consumer who cares enough will use AI to find the value themselves. A consumer who does not care will disengage entirely. Neither outcome is what the programme was designed to produce.
The Onboarding Problem That AI Could Actually Fix
76% of non-enrollees in US loyalty programmes avoid signing up because they feel they do not shop enough to justify the effort. Globally, 32% cite tedious sign-up processes as their primary obstacle.
The AI opportunity here is real and it is different from the AI hacking dynamic. If an AI agent can identify and deliver loyalty programme value without requiring the consumer to actively manage their participation, the “I don’t shop enough to justify the effort” objection dissolves.
Max Byloff, CEO of Comarch Loyalty Solutions, framed it directly:
“Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to manage their points. With agents, the program does that job. It finds the value and brings it to you.”
Our Take
Your Loyalty Programme Was Designed for the Shopper Who Forgets to Check Their Points. That Shopper No Longer Exists in Gen Z.
The Comarch finding that 64% of UK Gen Z consumers are using AI to hack loyalty programmes is the logical endpoint of a trend that every piece of loyalty research this month has been describing. Shoppers are less loyal than they were three years ago. Loyalty programmes feel generic. Irrelevant offers are the primary frustration.
And now the most engaged generation in terms of loyalty programme interaction is engaging with those programmes as optimisation problems rather than brand relationships.
The brands that will succeed in the AI loyalty era are the ones that design programmes where the AI hacking and the brand engagement happen simultaneously, where finding the optimal redemption path also brings the consumer into deeper contact with the brand’s product and experience.
The brands that design programmes where the AI extracts value without any brand contact will find that they have built very efficient point distribution systems with very little brand equity to show for it.
