Shoppers are increasingly turning to Flybuys points to help cover grocery costs

Shoppers at Coles are swapping Flybuys points for groceries as the popular rewards program is used by households to stretch budgets.

Shoppers are increasingly using Flybuys points to help pay for groceries amid cost of living pressures. Picture: Richard Dobson

Coles chief executive Leah Weckert says the nation’s largest loyalty scheme, Flybuys, is increasingly being used by households to pay for groceries as shoppers swap points for dollars at the checkout amid the cost-of-living crisis.

According to latest financial accounts lodged for Flybuys, which is jointly owned by Coles and Wesfarmers, the amount of offers sent to Flybuys members rose by 10.4 per cent in 2024 to 3.7 billion while the value of goods and services redeemed soared 33.8 per cent to $559.1m.

Much of the growth was powered by the ‘‘$10 off your shop’’ promotion in 2024, which allowed consumers to redeem points for cash off their shopping instantly at the check-outs of Coles supermarkets and liquor stores.

The growth of this promotion underlined the growing importance of reward schemes like Flybuys to help shoppers stretch their budgets.

“Customers are definitely taking advantage of that money off their shop on a pretty regular basis. Last year, we had two million households who redeemed Flybuys points who had never redeemed dollars off their shop before,” Ms Weckert told The Australian.

This helped Flybuys grow its members to 9.5 million members, up 5.3 per cent over 2024, while there was a 2.83 growth in average member swipe rates over the per­iod. For 2024 Flybuys members earned an 8.9 per cent increase in points.

Coles boss Leah Weckert. Picture: Hanna Lassen/Getty Images

Reward schemes such as Flybuys were becoming more important to shoppers trying to save money at the checkout and were seen as a way to reduce household bills, Ms Weckert observed.

“Customers are looking now for using loyalty offers to help balance the budget, and because we’ve made it so much easier to actually redeem them in a Coles store, or a Coles liquor store, that actually is getting used really regularly by customers to just help balance the budget.”

Ms Weckert is also a director and chair of Loyalty Pacific, the corporate entity which owns Flybuys, and is joined on the board by Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott, the boss of Kmart Group Ian Bailey and Coles chief customer officer Amanda McVay.

Flybuys now has more than 20 partners and has strong connections to Coles, its major shareholder, as well as Wesfarmers retail chains such as Bunnings and Kmart.

In 2024 Flybuys and OnePass, the paid membership program which provides shopping benefits to Wesfarmers brands, launched a partnership to offer OnePass members five times Flybuys points for every dollar spent in-store with click and collect at Kmart, Target, Bunnings and Officeworks.

Flybuys also has an alliance with Virgin Airlines’s Velocity frequent flyer program, which has recently been renewed, and saw travel and experience points redemptions for Flybuys leap 24.9 per cent in 2024.

Although the loss for Loyalty Pacific widened to $36.16m in 2024, from $26.85m in 2023, the losses are immaterial for owners Coles and Wesfarmers, as the rewards scheme drives important growth for their retail businesses.

In 2022, Flybuys ramped up its investment in cyber security to protect the personal data of its millions of members in the wake of hacking scandals which engulfed the country and businesses such as Optus and Medibank.

Flybuys spent $32.62m on technology in 2022, which would include money spent on cyber security, up strongly from $23.15m technology costs incurred in 2021.

Its 2024 accounts reflected the importance of investing in cyber security and protecting members’s data, with the company recording a technology expense of $28.34m.