Canada Loyalty Market Size & Forecast by Spend Value Across 100+ KPIs by Program Type, Channel Mix, Sector, Embedded Loyalty Penetration, and Platform Spend Segmentation - Databook Q1 2026 Update

The loyalty market in Canada is expected to grow by 13.7% annually, reaching US$1.73 billion by 2026.

The loyalty market in the country has experienced robust growth during 2021-2025, achieving a CAGR of 15.8%. This upward trajectory is expected to continue, with the market forecast to grow at a CAGR of 11.5% from 2026 to 2030. By the end of 2030, the loyalty market is projected to expand from its 2025 value of US$1.52 billion to approximately US$2.68 billion.

Key Trends and Drivers

The Canadian loyalty program market is defined by coalition scale, grocery-led frequency, and strong integration with financial services. Loyalty functions as a core component of everyday household spending rather than a peripheral engagement tool. Over the forecasting period, these dynamics are expected to persist, with app-first execution, selective partnership depth, and disciplined data governance shaping how loyalty programs evolve in Canada.

Rebuild Loyalty around Coalition Scale Aftermarket Restructuring

• Loyalty in Canada continues to be shaped by large coalition and network-based programs rather than fragmented, single-brand schemes. Air Miles has repositioned its model over the past year following program changes, while Scene+ backed by Scotiabank and Sobeys has expanded its relevance across grocery, entertainment, travel, and financial services. Coalition loyalty remains a defining feature of the Canadian market.
• Canada’s relatively smaller population and high household participation in loyalty favour scale-based models that aggregate earn and burn opportunities across sectors. Retailers and banks use coalitions to maintain relevance without independently funding full-spectrum rewards.
• Coalition-led loyalty is expected to stabilise and selectively deepen, with emphasis on partner quality and operational clarity rather than aggressive expansion.

Embed loyalty more tightly into grocery and everyday value propositions

• Grocery-led loyalty continues to play a central role in Canadian household engagement. Loblaw Companies operates PC Optimum across grocery, drugstore, and fuel formats, integrating loyalty into everyday spending and private-label ecosystems.
• Grocery retail in Canada is highly concentrated and price-sensitive. Loyalty programs are used to influence shopping frequency, manage promotional exposure, and maintain customer continuity across banners and channels.
• Grocery-linked loyalty is expected to remain structurally important, with incremental refinement in targeting and digital execution rather than fundamental program redesign.

Position loyalty as a financial services engagement layer

• Canadian banks continue to integrate loyalty into credit cards and broader customer propositions. Scotiabank leverages Scene+ across banking and partner categories, while other major banks maintain card-linked rewards and travel programs.
• The Canadian banking market is concentrated, and competition centres on deepening primary relationships. Loyalty programs support card usage, product bundling, and customer retention without altering core pricing structures.
• Bank-led loyalty is expected to remain stable, with tighter alignment between rewards, card usage patterns, and partner ecosystems.

Accelerate shift toward app-first loyalty execution

• Loyalty execution is increasingly app-based, with digital cards, personalised offers, and in-app redemption replacing physical credentials. Programs such as PC Optimum and Scene+ continue to prioritise mobile engagement across retail and services.
• High smartphone penetration and strong ecommerce adoption support app-led loyalty. Retailers and banks seek tighter integration between identity, offers, and checkout across physical and digital environments.
• App-first execution is expected to become the default, with physical cards playing a secondary role primarily for inclusivity.

Operate loyalty under heightened transparency and privacy expectations

• Loyalty programs increasingly emphasise clear communication around data usage, consent, and value exchange. Canadian operators are cautious in deploying personalisation, aligning loyalty design with evolving privacy expectations and regulatory scrutiny.
• Ongoing public and regulatory attention on consumer data protection influences how loyalty programs collect and activate customer information, particularly across multi-partner ecosystems.
• Data-driven loyalty enhancements are expected to progress incrementally, favouring trust-led and compliant designs over aggressive personalisation.

Competitive Landscape in the Canadian Loyalty Program Market

The Canadian loyalty program market is competitive but structurally stable, dominated by coalition programs, grocery-anchored ecosystems, and bank-led rewards. Competition centres on partner relevance, execution quality, and regulatory readiness rather than program proliferation. Over the forecasting period, the landscape is expected to evolve incrementally, with incumbents strengthening ecosystem integration and governance, and new entrants influencing how loyalty is delivered rather than who controls it.

Competition is concentrated in a mature, coalition-heavy market

Canada’s loyalty market is highly penetrated and structurally mature, with most large consumer segments already served by established programs. Competitive intensity is therefore driven by optimisation and partner reconfiguration rather than by new program launches. Coalition and large multi-sector programs continue to dominate, limiting room for standalone loyalty entrants and shifting competition toward ecosystem breadth, partner relevance, and operational execution.

Coalition programs anchor the competitive landscape

The competitive structure is led by large coalition-style programs with cross-sector reach. Scene+ has consolidated its position through grocery, entertainment, travel, and financial services integrations, supported by Scotiabank and Sobeys. Air Miles remains a significant player following its program restructuring, focusing on partner alignment and operational stability.
These coalitions compete on partner quality and everyday relevance rather than on aggressive reward differentiation, creating high switching costs for both consumers and partners.

Grocery-led ecosystems defend loyalty through scale and frequency

Retail-anchored loyalty represents a parallel competitive force. Loblaw Companies operates PC Optimum across grocery, pharmacy, fuel, and financial services, using loyalty as a core lever for frequency and basket management. This model competes indirectly with coalition programs by concentrating value within a closed retail ecosystem rather than distributing it across multiple sectors. Competition in this segment centres on execution consistency, digital engagement, and control of customer data.

Banks and card issuers compete through embedded rewards rather than new schemes

Canadian financial institutions continue to embed loyalty into credit cards and bundled banking propositions. Rather than launching new programs, banks focus on enhancing card-linked rewards, travel benefits, and partner earn-and-burn options within existing ecosystems. This reinforces loyalty as a financial relationship tool and limits opportunities for independent loyalty providers to gain scale without bank or retailer backing.

New entrants focus on enablement and niche use cases

Recent competitive activity in Canada’s loyalty space has involved new enablement-layer providers, particularly in the retail media and customer engagement domains. In May 2024, Loblaw Media partnered with Optable, a Montreal-based clean room and data collaboration platform, to support privacy-centric targeting and measurement within the PC Optimum ecosystem. The integration allows for secure sharing of loyalty-linked behavioural insights between Loblaw and brand advertisers without compromising consumer privacy.
Additionally, Caddle, a Canadian consumer insights and cashback platform, expanded its partnerships with CPG brands for offer delivery via loyalty-linked mobile journeys in 2024.

This report provides a detailed data-centric analysis of the loyalty industry in Canada, offering comprehensive coverage of both overall and alternative lending markets. It covers more than 100+ KPIs, including spend value on loyalty schemes, loyalty breakage rate, and penetration rate.

The report provides in-depth segmentation across the loyalty ecosystem, capturing loyalty spend value and breaking it down by core market dimensions. It classifies loyalty activity by program models (such as points, cashback, tiered, subscription, coalition, and gamified formats), membership structures, and execution channels (in-store, online, and mobile app), alongside embedded loyalty use cases integrated into payments, commerce, and platform ecosystems. The analysis further segments the market by industry verticals and assesses technology enablement, including AI-driven personalisation and emerging blockchain-led program mechanics. In addition, the dataset captures consumer demographics, enrolment pathways, and key program economics such as value accumulation, redemption, and breakage. Collectively, these datasets provide a comprehensive and quantifiable view of market size, structure, engagement behaviour, and value realisation dynamics within the loyalty market.

The research methodology is based on industry best practices. Its unbiased analysis leverages a proprietary analytics platform to offer a detailed view of emerging business and investment market opportunities.

Report Scope

This report provides a detailed data-centric analysis of the loyalty market in Canada, with comprehensive coverage across retail-sector context, loyalty spend dynamics, and loyalty platform economics. Below is a summary of key market segments:

Canada Retail Sector Market Context

• Canada Retail Industry Market Size, 2021-2030
• Canada Ecommerce Market Size, 2021-2030
• Canada POS Market Size Trend Analysis, 2021-2030

Canada Loyalty Spend Market Size and Growth Dynamics

• Canada Loyalty Spend Market Size and Future Growth Dynamics, 2021-2030
• Canada Loyalty Spend on Schemes by Value Accumulated and Value Redemption Rate, 2025
• Canada Loyalty Spend Share by Functional Domains, 2021-2030
• Canada Loyalty Spend by Loyalty Schemes, 2021-2030
• Canada Loyalty Spend by Loyalty Platforms, 2021-2030

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Loyalty Program Type

• Point-based Loyalty Program
• Tiered Loyalty Program
• Mission-driven Loyalty Program
• Spend-based Loyalty Program
• Gaming Loyalty Program
• Free Perks Loyalty Program
• Subscription Loyalty Program
• Community Loyalty Program
• Refer a Friend Loyalty Program
• Paid Loyalty Program
• Cashback Loyalty Program

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Channel

• In-Store
• Online
• Mobile

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Business Model

• Seller Driven
• Payment Instrument Driven
• Other Segment

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Key Sectors

• Retail
• Financial Services
• Healthcare & Wellness
• Restaurants & Food Delivery
• Travel & Hospitality (Cabs, Hotels, Airlines)
• Telecoms
• Media & Entertainment
• Other

Sector × Channel Views: Loyalty Schemes Spend by Key Sectors and Channels

• Online Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030
• In-store Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030
• Mobile App Loyalty Spend by Sector, 2021-2030

Canada Retail Sector Deep-Dive: Loyalty Schemes Spend by Retail Segment

• Diversified Retailers
• Department Stores
• Specialty Stores
• Supermarket and Convenience Store
• Other

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Accessibility

• Card Based Access
• Digital Access

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Consumer Type

• B2B Consumers
• B2C Consumers

Canada Loyalty Schemes Spend Segmentation by Membership Type

• Free
• Free + Premium
• Premium

Canada Loyalty Spend Split by Embedded vs. Non-Embedded Loyalty

• Embedded Loyalty Programs
• Non-Embedded Loyalty Programs

Canada Loyalty Spend Split by Use of AI / Blockchain

• AI Driven Loyalty Program
• Blockchain Driven Loyalty Program

Canada Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Software Use Case

• Analytics and AI Driven
• Management Platform

Canada Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Vendor / Solution Partner

• In-house
• Third-Party Vendor

Canada Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Deployment

• Cloud
• On-Premise

Canada Loyalty Platform Spend Segmentation by Offering

• Software
• Services
• Custom Built Platform vs. Off the Shelf Platform

Canada Consumer Demographics & Behaviour (Loyalty Spend Share), 2025

• Age Group
• Income Level
• Gender

Canada Loyalty Program KPIs, Behavioral Metrics & Embedded, 2025

• Primary Loyalty Motivation Split Analysis
• Loyalty Program Breakage Rate Analysis
• Loyalty Program Enrollment Channel Mix Analysis
• Embedded Loyalty Penetration by Channel

Reasons to Buy

• Comprehensive Market Intelligence: Gain a comprehensive view of the loyalty market by quantifying total loyalty spend value and its composition across loyalty schemes and loyalty platforms, supported by retail context indicators to benchmark market scale, structure, and growth dynamics.
• Granular Loyalty Spend Coverage: Analyze loyalty spend value across loyalty schemes and loyalty platforms, supported by structured segmentation across program types (e.g., point-based, tiered, cashback, subscription, community, gaming, mission-driven, paid, and referral-led formats).
• Channel and Sector-Level Execution Insights: Evaluate how loyalty spend is distributed across in-store, online, and mobile channels, and across key verticals including Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare & Wellness, Restaurants & Food Delivery, Travel & Hospitality, Telecoms, and Media & Entertainment, with dedicated sector × channel views.
• Program Structure and Participation Mix: Understand how loyalty schemes differ by business model (seller-driven vs. payment-instrument-driven), accessibility (card-based vs. digital), consumer type (B2B vs. B2C), and membership type (free, premium, and free+premium), enabling more precise program design and competitive benchmarking.
• Embedded Loyalty and Emerging Mechanisms Tracking: Assess the evolution of embedded vs. non-embedded loyalty and track spend splits linked to program enablement, including AI-driven and blockchain-driven loyalty program spend where captured in the dataset.
• Platform Spend and Vendor/Deployment Benchmarking: Benchmark loyalty platform economics by software use case (analytics/AI-driven vs. management platforms), solution partner model (in-house vs. third-party), deployment (cloud vs. on-premise), and offering mix (software vs. services; custom-built vs. off-the-shelf).
• Consumer Demographics and Program KPI Lens: Access loyalty spend share by age, income, and gender, alongside decision-critical program KPIs such as loyalty penetration (% of retail sales under loyalty), primary motivation split, breakage rate, enrollment channel mix, and embedded loyalty penetration by channel.
• Decision-Ready Databook Format with 100+ KPIs: Leverage a structured dataset with historical and forecast coverage through 2030, designed for direct integration into market models, strategic planning, and executive presentations by retailers, platforms, payment providers, technology vendors, and investors.