LoyaltyMatch is another market without money. The site allows you to barter your loyalty points from one scheme with someone else’s points from another scheme. Say you have points with airline A, but you want to take a trip on airline B, then you can use LoyaltyMatch to make the trade with someone else who has airline B points but wants to take a trip on airline A.

The problem with a barter system like this is that it requires a pretty thick market to be effective, otherwise the probability of the required double coincidence of wants is low, and not many trades can be made. So LoyaltyMatch also allows you to sell reward items for cash to people who want whatever items you can get with your points. In this case the seller sets a fixed price (why not have an auction option too?).

It’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this market has on loyalty programmes. To the extent that it raises the points redemption rate and increases costs, the programmes might be forced to devalue their points (more points required for rewards).

(HT: Mashable)