Loyalty glossary · 11. Legal and compliance (15)
Ccpa
CCPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act, is a state privacy law that requires businesses to disclose data collection and gives consumers rights over their personal information, including the right to opt out of sale and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights.
The California Consumer Privacy Act does not exempt loyalty programmes. Every rewards scheme that collects a name, an email, and a purchase history is a business subject to its financial incentive rules, and the law requires a notice that values the personal data the programme takes.
Accrual design determines how much data a member trades for each point earned. A programme that accrues 2 points per dollar spent and values the collected data at 0.7 cents per point is effectively paying 1.4 cents per dollar of consent. A competitor that accrues only 1 point per dollar but values data at 1.5 cents per point pays 1.5 cents per dollar, which is 0.1 cent more per dollar for the same purchase history.
Activity-based qualification is the usual place where CCPA violations hide. A programme that awards top tier only after 12 months of consecutive activity sees its active member rate drop when enough consumers exercise their deletion right, because those consumers no longer meet the activity test. CCPA forbids that drop unless the programme can prove the higher tier's value is tied to the data removed.
The opt-out of sale is the sharpest test. A member who opts out of sale does not forfeit accrued points, but the programme may no longer use that member's purchase history to personalise offers, and that is the real value. Treating points as a separate asset from the data that generates them is the mistake that CCPA makes visible.
Loyalty Register takes the position that a loyalty programme which cannot show its data valuation per point under CCPA is not compliant, it is just unaudited. The law does not set a fair price, but it forces the programme to name one, and that named price is where the weak designs break.