Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd is expanding SuperCoins, its loyalty programme, into a cross-platform rewards currency, much like airline miles, with benefits extending beyond shopping to Uber rides.
Around 40 million users earn or burn SuperCoins in some form, one-third of Flipkart’s customer base interacts with the programme, and roughly 90% of earned coins are redeemed, said Gaurav Arora, head of payments at Flipkart, in an interview, highlighting how loyalty is gaining traction in the discount-led Indian e-commerce market.
Arora said the idea has evolved over time and is now in its “third version”. “It is tough to make a loyalty product work. You have to get the economics right before anything else.”
Flipkart currency
The e-commerce platform has extended the rewards currency to services such as Uber ride-hailing, where users can earn SuperCoins on rides, and to its Marriott Bonvoy tie-up, which lets customers earn and transfer points across the two programmes.
Arora said partner integrations matter because the goal is to embed rewards into everyday life. “If you keep it tied only to one marketplace or one app, then either it is not valuable enough, or the customer forgets about it,” he said.
It has also reworked its own loyalty stack so that Plus members earn 2% SuperCoins per transaction, while Plus Premium members get up to 4% on purchases of ₹10,000 and above, along with early access and other perks.
That tiered structure is deliberate, Arora said. “The economics behind the tiered logic is very simple. The more frequent you are with us, the more we want to reward you, and we want to keep you at that higher frequency tier because you get rewarded more,” he added.
Arora said Flipkart does not want to issue coins it cannot support. “Our goal is that the customer should have the option to burn whenever they want,” he said, while also stressing that the company wants users to value a coin at more than one rupee over time.
He described expiry as a defect, not a feature, and said the goal is to limit issuance so customers trust that the currency will hold value.
Race to build loyalty ecosystems
The loyalty push is built around a simple idea: the company wants to issue only as many coins as it can back with real redemption value, so the rewards stay useful for customers and sustainable for the business.
That places Flipkart alongside Amazon and Tata Digital in the race to build sticky loyalty ecosystems, albeit through different models. Amazon’s Diamonds programme is also a rewards currency, but its seller terms show it is explicitly designed to increase customer engagement and shopping transactions, and Amazon charges a Diamonds fee of 0.105% of the product’s total selling price to fund the programme.
Tata NeuCoins, meanwhile, operate within Tata Digital’s super app, where customers can earn and use rewards across Tata brands such as BigBasket, Croma, 1mg, Air India, and the Indian Hotels Co. Ltd, with 1 NeuCoin equalling ₹1.
For Flipkart, the bigger bet is that loyalty can work even in a market built on deal-hunting. Arora said the company’s 40 million SuperCoins users have a burn rate close to one-to-one with issuance, suggesting the programme is being used rather than hoarded.
“Pretty much everything ends up being used,” he said, adding that the company wants SuperCoins to become valuable enough that partners see it as a long-term growth tool, not a short-lived promotion.
The loyalty push also comes at a time when Walmart-owned Flipkart has been preparing for a long-awaited public market debut. The company had explored raising $2 billion to $2.5 billion in a pre-listing funding round, but media reports suggest those discussions have been put on hold as Walmart is pushing Flipkart to prioritize profitability and Ebitda breakeven by 2026-27 before any listing. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
Flipkart reported a 14% year-on-year rise in revenue to ₹20,493 crore in 2024-25, while losses narrowed 37% to ₹1,494 crore. The company’s total expenses rose 8% to ₹22,311 crore, with marketing and promotion costs jumping 37% to ₹4,100 crore.