The Thinking

Ideas worth sharing.

On product thinking, platform strategy, and the future of fintech. Each piece traces one pattern: someone asked a bigger question, and changed everything.

40
Fintech · Platform Thinking · AI
The Story
Nobody Tells
Fintech · Platform Thinking · AI · Featured

The Story Nobody Tells — 40 Years of Loyalty, One Pattern

Loyalty was never a banking idea. It was borrowed. From airlines. And then banks made the picture bigger. And then platforms made it bigger again. Now AI is doing it once more. Every era followed the same pattern: someone asked a bigger question and changed everything.

This piece traces 40 years of loyalty evolution — from American Airlines in 1981 to AI-powered agentic loyalty today — and shows what it means for product leaders building the next generation of financial services.

Published on LinkedIn · 9-part series
Read on LinkedIn

Inside the Series

40 years. One pattern. A bigger question each time.

01
1981
Airlines Start It
American Airlines launches AAdvantage. Not a bank. An airline. The insight that changed financial services.
02
1984–1990s
Banks Expand It
Diners Club. Amex. Citibank. Banks partner with airlines — then stop needing airlines at all.
03
2000s
Platforms Scale It
One card. Every merchant. Multi-partner ecosystems. An $80.92B global loyalty market born from this shift.
04
Now
AI Makes It Bigger
Hyper-personalised, real-time, agentic loyalty. The bank didn't react. It anticipated.

More thinking coming.

Product Thinking
Feature → Product → Platform: The shift that changes everything
Three stages. One insight. The progression every product leader needs to understand — and every team needs to live through.
Coming soon
Leadership
Why teams don't need more process — they need more context
The case against adding ceremonies and for giving teams the one thing that actually changes behaviour: the big picture.
Coming soon
AI · Fintech
From rewards redemption to intelligent engagement: what agentic AI changes for product
The next era of loyalty isn't about points. It's about anticipation. What product managers need to know now.
Coming soon

The Pattern

Each era, someone asked a bigger question.

Airlines → Banks → Platforms → AI. The fear was real at every stage. But every fear gave way to something bigger.

  • ✦Airlines → Banks borrowed the loyalty idea
  • ✦Banks → Platforms unlocked multi-partner scale
  • ✦Platforms → AI is unlocking personalisation at scale
  • ✦AI → Agents will unlock real-time contextual loyalty

I don't build products. I build the thinking behind them.