World of Finance: It’s all about the points

What points am I talking about? The points where you shop or do some business online or offline and get to redeem it with cash or credit to your account or buy even more stuff from the retailer offering you the points. And more and more retailers are adding points to their loyal customers account so that these customers are hooked to these retailers and cannot buy from other retailers because they want to redeem those points. You know in a sense points are good since wherever you are spending you will be able to redeem those points for some items which want to buy but because of the point system just wait till you accumulate enough so that you can essentially get it for free. And now almost every business where offline or online have loyalty cards or some type of arrangement like that where you accumulate points and when you reach a certain level can redeem it in store or get credit towards your bill. And different retailers and service providers have different levels and different criteria how to accumulate points. Usually points are calculated at 1 point to a dollar but some may have 10 points to a dollar, the difference being the earlier one takes more time to redeem and the later on less time to redeem. Some retailers even give you free points when are asked to join their loyalty program. And sometimes these points can be huge like 20 thousand points when you open some account in some bank or give you points on opening some retail/store credit account.