How to choose an incentive platform for sending rewards at scale
By Kathryn Casna●4 min. read●Feb 2, 2026
When you're sending rewards at scale — whether for research participants, employee recognition, or customer referrals — manual processes break down fast. Your finance team has to wrangle multiple vendors, your HR team has to track gift cards in manual spreadsheets, and the marketing team has to wonder why 200 rebates were never delivered.
An incentive platform consolidates everything into one system: reward selection, delivery, tracking, and reporting. With it, your team can deliver an excellent recipient experience at scale with less time, effort, and risk than your old manual process.
Here's how to evaluate your options for incentive platforms that make life easier.
How an incentive platform works
Most platforms follow the same basic workflow for ordering and sending rewards:
Set your program rules. Define who gets rewarded, for what, and how much. Some platforms support complex rules, like reward tiers based on behavior, or manager sign-off for amounts over $100.
Choose reward types. Recipients care about choice, so give them cash and gift card options. The platform should offer gift cards to popular brands as well as prepaid Visa cards and PayPal, Venmo, and bank transfers. The more options, the better.
Upload recipients or trigger via API. You can send rewards manually by uploading a CSV. Or (ideally) you can connect the platform to your existing tools, like CRMs, survey software, and HRIS systems, to trigger rewards automatically.
Send rewards and track delivery. Recipients get an email or SMS with a link to claim their reward. And if you pick a quality platform, it will also be able to handle resending rewards, as well as localization and currency conversion for international recipients.
Track performance and reconcile spend. Great incentive platforms make it easy to monitor reward delivery and spending by department, all from a single dashboard.
The key capabilities that matter for an incentive platform
Beyond the basics, look for platforms that deliver an excellent recipient experience, makes it easy for your team to get work done quickly, and that doesn’t eat up too much of your budget.
Reward options and coverage
Choice drives results. Research on reward preferences found that giving recipients control over their reward type can increase performance by as much as 40% — but only when the options are attractive. That means the platform should offer the payout methods your recipients actually want.
Look for platforms that support digital gift cards from multiple brands, prepaid cards, bank transfers, and digital wallets like PayPal or Venmo (ideally in one solution). You don’t want just a gift card distributor, or you’ll be stuck manually processing other kinds of incentives. If you're sending internationally, check which countries and currencies your platform covers.
Bulk-sending workflows
Sending 10 rewards is easy. Sending 10,000 requires automation. Look for batch uploads, scheduled sends, and the ability to trigger rewards based on events in your other systems, whether that's a first-time purchase, an approved stipend, or a well-earned bonus.
Centralized controls
Reward programs (especially those with automations) need guardrails. Without them, one well-intentioned team member can blow through a quarterly budget in a week. Look for platforms that have:
Approval workflows that prevent unauthorized sends
Spending caps that keep budgets in check
Role-based permissions that control who can access what
Integrations
Adding new tools can save loads of time in any workflow, or bog your team down with duplicative work and manual workarounds. To ensure your new platform achieves the former, it should connect to your existing tools, like Salesforce, HubSpot, Qualtrics, Workday, Slack, Zapier, or whatever your team already uses.
Power users looking to build customs workflows or embed rewards into you own product (like and app), should prioritize API access. It gives your development team the option to build in more capabilities that are tailored to your team or users.
Integrations are also critical for the reward experience. The faster you can deliver the incentive, the greater the satisfaction for the recipient. According to Incisiv’s 2022 Loyalty Program Index, 78% of shoppers prefer to access their rewards online and use them immediately, and that providing instant welcome bonuses or discounts “enhances the customer experience by creating customer delight.”
Reporting
According to The Incentive Research Foundation, 82% of incentive owners that better analysis would directly guide incentive investment decisions, but more than 40% struggle to get executives to pay attention to existing data. Better visibility and reporting can solve this issue.
Look for platforms with real-time dashboards showing spend by program, and pay attention to recipient engagement to help you prove ROI and spot problems early. In addition, look for exportable reports for finance and audit purposes.
Security
Incentive fraud is expensive. In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission reported 438,088 incidents of fraud regarding payment methods, including $374 million from payment apps and $199 million from gift cards.
Your incentive platform should offer features like single-use links, expiration controls, and SOC 2 compliance. Additionally, fraud detection tools that flag suspicious patterns, like duplicate IPs and recycled payment destinations can prevent significant losses.
Recipient experience
The point of a reward is to make someone feel valued, whether it's a research participant, a loyal customer, or an employee. A clunky redemption process with too many clicks, confusing instructions, or broken links undermines that goal.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports that consumers often find the redemption process “more complex, opaque, or time-consuming than they had assumed. ”And that difficulty reduced the perceived value of rewards to a given consumer.
Instead, choose an incentive platform that helps recipients claim rewards in a few minutes or less.
Costs and pricing models to expect
Incentive platforms are typically priced in one of three ways:
Platform fees: A monthly or annual subscription for access
Per-send fees: A charge for each reward delivered
Reward markup: A percentage added to the face value of each reward
Some platforms combine these models. Others, like Tremendous, let you send digital rewards for free, with no platform fees or per-send charges.
When comparing pricing, calculate the total cost for your expected volume. A platform with no monthly fee but high per-send costs might be more expensive at scale than one with a flat subscription.
Key takeaways
With the right platform, your incentives program doesn’t have to drain your time or your rewards budget. When shopping for the right tool, ask yourself:
Does it support the reward types and countries you need?
Can it handle your volume without manual workarounds?
Does it integrate with your existing tools, provide centralized controls, and allow for easy reporting?
Does it protect against fraud?
Is pricing transparent and predictable?
The right platform should make sending rewards feel effortless for you and your recipients. If your current process involves spreadsheets, multiple logins, or frequent "where's my reward?" emails, it's time to upgrade.
