Testing, then leverage.

A year in two halves.

2025 was the year we moved from having an idea about rewarding better choices to hard evidence that the mechanic works — and then built the platform, propositions and partnerships to scale that proof through 2026.

H1 was about testing. H2 was about leverage. Together they set up everything the business is planning to execute against in the year ahead — from the first Tier-1 issuer pilots, through the wider brand pipeline, to a company-wide repositioning launching early in the new year.

The first meaningful test-and-learn.

We ran a single well-designed pilot with UCL, Compass Group and Mastercard that did most of the heavy lifting for the year — giving us the first hard evidence that rewarding better choices measurably shifts consumer behaviour.

Pilot partners

Environmental read was equally clear: an 18.8% reduction in hot-meal emissions and a 16.8% reduction in overall basket emissions for members versus control. Real behaviour change, measured against a real baseline, over real weeks.

Mastercard put their name on it.

Following the pilot, Mastercard publicly endorsed the model — featuring the work in a Mastercard.com editorial and having their Chief Sustainability Officer speak on camera about how the platform could scale.

Mastercard × Reewild · the PlanetPoints pilot on film.

Alongside the video, Mastercard co-hosted a roundtable with industry leaders at London Climate Action Week to open the conversation with brand and issuer counterparts. The commercial relationship moved from bilateral pilot into a broader strategic collaboration that is now the anchor of our commercial pipeline going into 2026.

From pilot to partner: a signed supplier agreement with Mastercard.

The relationship didn\'t stop at endorsement. Following the pilot, Vela and Mastercard signed a formal supplier agreement — moving the partnership onto an established commercial footing and opening the Tier-1 issuer distribution route we\'re building against in 2026.

✓ Supplier agreement signed

Vela is now a contracted Mastercard supplier.

The same platform that ran the PlanetPoints pilot is now formally onboarded to Mastercard — the foundation for plugging into their issuer network at scale, and the anchor of the Tier-1 pilots planned for 2026.

New rewards app, live nationally.

Alongside the pilot, we launched the new consumer rewards app in market across the UK — the surface consumers actually use. The positioning tightened into something people immediately understood: "Avios or Nectar points, but for health and sustainability."

The clarity mattered. It let us go from explaining what the product was to describing what it did — and it started to open the door to a broader repositioning we're now planning to land at the start of 2026.

The world is moving. So is the strategy.

Over the course of H1 the corporate and public-agenda winds around ESG have begun to shift materially. What had been a durable tailwind for sustainability-tinted consumer products is starting to look more like a headwind — particularly across the US and in enterprise procurement.

We're reading the shift honestly and making a deliberate call: rather than double down on a positioning the market is cooling on, we're beginning to broaden the value proposition into health and nutrition — where consumer and public-agenda tailwinds are strengthening rather than weakening. Same mechanic, wider surface area, more resilient category to build in.

Building the team to ship faster.

With the commercial signal validated, we invested in the ability to build against it. We opened an engineering office in Hyderabad, hired five software engineers and a UI designer, and moved product velocity up a step change. The point of the investment: to make it possible to run enterprise-scale conversations while also shipping the product changes those conversations demand.

From proof to commercial readiness.

Building on the behavioural and data validation delivered in H1, the focus in H2 has shifted to execution: converting proof into scalable propositions, strengthening the platform, and increasing strategic leverage ahead of 2026.

Progress this half is quieter on the pilot-headline numbers, sharper on the setup. Every part of the business — payments engagement, product, brand — is moving into a state where 2026 can execute against it from a position of leverage.

Mastercard prioritised a €20bn market. We're the entry.

Mid-way through H2, Mastercard prioritised the European prepaid meal-card market as a core go-to-market opportunity — a category with over 80% of the addressable spend concentrated in a handful of issuers. Their initial entry partner: Edenred.

Distribution route

Visa opens the second door.

Alongside deepening the Mastercard relationship, we've opened active distribution and contract discussions with Visa. That isn't drift — it's a deliberate move to introduce competitive tension at the payment-network level: better commercial terms, faster movement on both sides, and the option to run parallel proofs through two of the world's largest payment rails rather than tie the platform to one.

Both networks live

A repeatable proposition for QSR and CPG.

On the brand side, we've built and validated the first repeatable brand-facing proposition: an always-on loyalty layer rewarding item-level purchases across all retailers, while accruing valuable SKU-level data and insights that individual retailers can't offer their suppliers.

The proof came from our own H1 pilot data: +5.5% basket value, +9.8% transaction frequency. Repeatable, measurable, brand-fundable. That framing has opened Q4 proposals to Nestlé, Hovis and Sapling — the pipeline we're planning to convert through H1 2026.

Q4 proposals out

Bank-grade, integration-ready.

In parallel, we've developed a bank-grade loyalty proposition designed to be embedded via a low-lift API / SDK — giving issuers item-level insight on everyday spend and a new engagement layer for their cardholders. Bank-grade means fraud controls, performance and security fit for a regulated deployment, not a consumer app in a suit.

Advanced conversations are now open across Zero, Triodos, Nationwide and Edenred. Both Mastercard and Visa are preparing Tier-1 distribution channels for Q1 2026, subject to their internal approvals.

Advanced conversations

Rewards catalogue, reach and retention.

Three partnerships have materially expanded the platform's optionality this half:

Tango · global rewards catalogue

Access to one of the world's largest scalable rewards catalogues (Eurostar, Apple, Airbnb, and thousands more). Instantly widens what members can redeem points against, without operational complexity per brand.

Octopus Energy · first affiliate channel

Distribution deal with the UK's largest energy supplier (7m users). The first meaningful affiliate route to consumers outside our own marketing surface.

Nutracheck · health & nutrition reach

Integration scheduled for Q1 2026 to extend reach to 3m health-conscious users — the exact audience the strategic pivot into health & nutrition was designed for.

The engagement stack, upgraded.

The consumer surface has gone materially deeper. Shipped this half: health metrics on every purchase, a referral system, upgraded rewards, streaks, a Plus subscription plan, and AI-powered email receipt scanning at scale. On the platform, fraud controls and performance have been hardened for commercial deployment, and partner API documentation is published for the first time.

Early product-market fit signals hold: top users sustaining 41+ consecutive days of receipt scanning, with cohort-wide engagement averaging 19+ days. Reward engagement runs at 70%+ among active users — repeat value exchange, not one-and-done downloads.

Newsweek. #2 in America. Reewild in the write-up.

In December, Mastercard ranked #2 in Newsweek's "America's Most Responsible Companies". Mastercard's Chief Sustainability Officer used the feature interview to name Reewild as the pilot showing how consumer behaviour actually shifts.

When a top-two ranked corporate names your platform in a top-tier US business publication, it changes the temperature of every conversation you walk into next.

Reewild → something more.

Quietly through H2 we've progressed the strategic work to move the company beyond the Reewild identity — the positioning, the point of view, the visual system for a platform built for what comes next. That work is on track to land in market early in 2026.

Iteration, sequencing and network tension.

What the year of leverage sets up.

2025 was about proving and preparing. 2026 is about executing against that setup — the pipeline, propositions, product and brand foundation are all in place.