Beginning in Q3 2020, cardholders of thousands of financial institutions participating in FIS’ Premium Payback loyalty network will be able to use their eligible card loyalty points to pay for eligible online purchases at millions of PayPal merchants globally.

Cardholders in FIS’ Premium Payback loyalty network will soon be able to easily link their reward points to their account with PayPal, enabling mutual customers to use their eligible rewards points to pay for eligible purchases via PayPal at their favorite retail brands. The new agreement builds on an existing relationship between FIS and Worldpay for processing card payments for PayPal customers in more than 50 markets around the world.

Integration with the FIS Premium Payback network helps enable PayPal to scale its Pay with Rewards capabilities to financial institutions of all sizes in the U.S. Thousands of financial institutions representing more than 7,000 card loyalty programs are enrolled in the FIS Premium Payback ecosystem. When these cardholders use PayPal to pay a merchant online, they will have the option to convert their eligible loyalty point balance to currency as an alternative form of payment.

“Our partnership with FIS will help us extend Pay with Rewards to even more customers, offering more payment choice to our joint customers,” said Jim Magats, senior vice president of global payments at PayPal. “The combination of FIS’s wide-reaching loyalty program, which services thousands of financial institutions, and PayPal’s network of 24 million global merchants will enable millions of additional cardholders to use loyalty points for PayPal purchases.”

“It’s exciting that two leading pioneers in the loyalty as a currency space are joining forces to open new lanes of commerce,” said Jim Johnson, head of Americas Payments & Wealth at FIS. “This new partnership with PayPal demonstrates FIS’ drive to turn loyalty programs into a strategic differentiator for our financial institution clients and create a seamless new payment experience for their cardholders.”