Tap rewards system
Seconded from Microsoft to Tap Network, I owned the rewards system in the Tap mobile app, built to be interoperable with Uber Rewards and most major loyalty programs instead of standing alone.
200,000+users
- Company
- Microsoft (seconded to Tap Network)
- Role
- Associate Product Manager → Product Manager, Microsoft (seconded to Tap Network)
- Timeline
- 2019 – 2021
- Platforms
- Mobile
- Type
- Feature
TL;DR
- Problem
- Loyalty points tend to stay inside the program that issued them. The rewards system in the Tap mobile app was built to be interoperable with Uber Rewards and most major loyalty programs.
- What I did
- Seconded from Microsoft to Tap Network from February 2019 to November 2021, I owned the rewards system and scoped requirements for the partner API integrations with each partner's engineering team.
- Result
- Three partner integrations live, with Uber, Warner Music Group and Brave, and 200,000+ users.
Context & problem
From February 2019 to November 2021, Microsoft seconded me to Tap Network, where I owned the rewards system in the Tap mobile app.
The way I read the problem: points are worth more when they don’t stay locked inside the program that issued them. Tap’s system was built to be interoperable with Uber Rewards and most major loyalty programs at the time.
Discovery & insight
In a rewards product, the questions that decide whether people care are what their points can already buy and how soon. So the redemption side mattered as much as the earning side: what a small balance can buy matters as much as how points are earned.
Strategy & bets
The bet was interoperability: a system that plugs into other programs rather than another closed points scheme. The way I thought about each partner integration, it turned on one trade-off: what stays on the partner’s side and what the rewards system supplies through its APIs, a line drawn again for each partner.
Solution
It was a gamified consumer rewards platform: built on points and redemption. The product can still be seen today inside Uphold, a wallet app, where TAP Rewards offers gift cards, sweepstakes and a daily prize wheel. The screens below are from 2026 and show the product as it exists now, not necessarily as I worked on it.
Execution
I owned the rewards system and scoped requirements for the partner API integrations with each partner’s engineering team. Three integrations went live: Uber, Warner Music Group and Brave.
Validation & results
Beyond three live partner integrations and 200,000+ users, the signal that matters most in a rewards product is redemption, since a reward that is never spent does nothing for the user or the partner.
Reflection
The secondment taught me how much of a platform product is decided at the partner boundary: what each side owns, and what has to stay consistent from one partner to the next. Next time I’d make that boundary a shared template from the first partner on, so each new integration starts from the last one.