Radar CEO: Geolocation Builds Loyalty Ecosystems With Right-Place Messaging

Forget everything you thought you knew about geolocation.

As the digital economy grows more personalized and competitive, payments and loyalty strategies are entering a new era where location is more than just a data point.

“Location-based marketing and messaging is a really powerful tool to drive higher engagement on push notifications, more personalized messaging, foot traffic and ultimately revenue,” Radar co-founder and CEO Nick Patrick told PYMNTS.

While most people associate geolocation with retail, Patrick pointed to emerging use cases in financial services and payments. For banks, applications include ATM and branch finders, real-time fraud detection and geo-triggered cash-back promotions through retail partners.

“Geolocation data is powerful when it comes to anti-fraud,” Patrick said. “Whether it’s detecting account takeovers or helping banks power cash-back offers, there are just a ton of possibilities.”

“If someone’s near a partner store, you can prompt them with a personalized offer,” he added. “If a transaction comes from a suspicious location, you can flag it instantly.”

The confluence of real-time geolocation data, artificial intelligence-driven personalization and integrated mobile wallets underscore how payments innovation today is less about adding new touchpoints and more about making every interaction smarter. As technology advances, the payment is no longer the end point of a transaction. Rather, for retailers and financial institutions, it can be the connective tissue binding together loyalty, engagement and experience.

The ROI of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

Observers see the momentum behind geolocation-powered ecosystems as part of two converging macro-trends in tech. The first is a shift from broad segmentation to true one-to-one personalization. The second is vendor consolidation.

“Five years ago, we saw an explosion of point solutions,” Patrick said. “Now, teams are looking to simplify. A big part of what we’ve unlocked for our customers is an all-in-one location platform. You can cut your maps cost and reallocate that budget to power location-based marketing — often in a budget-neutral way.”

This consolidation trend is particularly appealing for digital teams that are already juggling multiple platforms such as CRM, CDP, marketing automation and more, he said.

“You want a partner that understands your tech stack, that helps you build a unified picture of your customer across systems,” Patrick said.

As personalization, loyalty and privacy converge, the opportunity for payments companies is becoming not just about knowing where your customer is, but also about knowing when and why to show up. In a crowded marketplace where push notifications abound, the key isn’t volume; it’s value.

“Using geolocation as a way to be helpful, not spammy … to break through the noise with right-place, right-time messaging and app experiences, that’s a big part of it,” Patrick said.

On the back end, enabling this level of integration requires a more interoperable infrastructure — one that links merchant systems, payment gateways, loyalty engines and geolocation services. Open banking and API-first architecture have accelerated this convergence, allowing disparate systems to speak a common language.

Privacy, Precision and the New Rules of Engagement

However, with greater power comes greater scrutiny. The same geolocation data that enables hyper-personalized engagement also raises complex privacy concerns.

“Consumers have gotten very savvy and very discerning,” Patrick said. “If you want to get folks to opt into location permissions, you have to make it really clear what data is being collected and why — and also, what does the end user get out of it? This isn’t about compromising on privacy. It’s about delivering better, more helpful experiences.”

Brands that embrace this transparency are seeing higher opt-in rates and greater customer loyalty, he said.

Radar’s case study with the PGA Tour revealed that geolocation-enabled push notifications drove 71% higher app open rates, Patrick said. Meanwhile, payment and rewards platform Ibotta — another long-time Radar customer — achieved 10 times higher open rates when users received messages upon entering a store.

“It’s a really powerful tool,” Patrick said. “In this era where folks are focused on driving more digital engagement, loyalty and personalization … there’s a lot of great examples.”

As quick-service restaurants and retailers look to tighten the loop between mobile and in-store, Radar’s technology offers the companies a bridge. For example, Dick’s Sporting Goods uses Radar-powered geofencing. When a customer opens the app in-store, it recognizes the location and activates a “store mode,” providing maps, exclusive offers and scan-and-pay capabilities.

“It’s a really great kind of seamless blending of digital and physical,” Patrick said. “We’re starting to see retailers want to push that even further — understanding not just when someone is in the store, but which part of the store.”

This evolution into “micro-messaging” is part of a broader shift toward real-time, hyper-relevant personalization, he said. It’s not about targeting demographics — it’s about tailoring experiences to individual behaviors and context.