# perk ## Hero ### 3+ years shipping launches while strengthening the platform underneath. Perk needed to keep shipping product without letting tech debt and platform gaps slow them down. Bleu became the product development partner that could do both. ## Context Perk is a loyalty platform with an ambitious vision: transform loyalty programs from static point systems into dynamic, multi-channel engagement engines. The goal was to automatically turn any brand interaction — purchases, social shares, referrals, content engagement — into rewardable moments that drive measurable behavior change. The challenge wasn't just technical. Perk was entering a crowded market where most loyalty solutions felt bolted-on rather than built-in. What was at stake: proving that loyalty could be both flexible and powerful, that brands could launch real programs without enterprise-level budgets or timelines. - Competitive market with solutions that feel bolted-on rather than built-in - Need to validate ideas quickly with real users - Complex reward logic and receipt processing at scale - Balance flexibility with power and simplicity ## Our role We became Perk's core product development partner — moving quickly enough to validate ideas with real users, deep enough in the system to handle reward logic and receipt processing at scale, and involved enough in product decisions to shape direction rather than just execute tickets. ### Quote > "What you wished your last team was." ## What changed Perk's platform now operates at a different scale without engineering becoming a bottleneck. Work that used to require heavy custom effort now moves faster because the platform can absorb new rules, channels, and interfaces without being rethought each time. That gives Perk room to validate ideas with real users before committing to larger roadmap bets. - 1.6M+ tracked actions in 2025 - 780k+ completed challenges - 220k+ rewards processed - 100k+ receipts verified - Time-to-launch reduced from months to days - **3+** years as embedded partner - **12k+** commits shipped - **1,600+** pull requests merged - **16** apps in production ## Areas we took ownership of #### Core Loyalty Engine Built the foundational infrastructure that powers Perk's flexible reward mechanics. - **Challenge Completion Logic**: Designed challenge completion logic that processed 780k+ completed challenges, handling edge cases around timing, eligibility, and reward distribution. - **Rules Engine**: Architected a rules engine flexible enough to support any brand's loyalty model while maintaining performance as action volume scaled to 1.6M+ tracked actions. - **Real-time Reward Claiming**: Enabled real-time reward claiming with 220k+ rewards processed, balancing instant gratification with fraud prevention. - **Cloud Infrastructure**: Design, implementation and load testing of cloud infrastructure supporting 10k+ concurrent users. #### Receipt Processing & Verification Perk's differentiator was bringing offline purchases into the loyalty loop. - **OCR and Validation Pipeline**: Developed OCR integration and validation pipeline that processed 100k+ receipts with automated item extraction and eligibility verification. - **Fraud Detection**: Implemented fraud detection patterns while keeping the user experience frictionless — customers get validated quickly, brands get protected automatically. #### Multi-Channel Action Tracking Loyalty only works if it's everywhere your customers are. - **Platform Integrations**: Integrated with e-commerce platforms, social media APIs, and referral systems to capture actions automatically. - **Tracking Architecture**: Designed tracking architecture that onboarded 100k+ new active users while maintaining data consistency across channels. - **Attribution Logic**: Built attribution logic ensuring users get credit for their actions regardless of where they happen. #### Admin & End-User Interfaces Built the interfaces that give Perk's clients visibility into what drives customer behavior. - **Real-time Dashboards**: Real-time dashboards showing challenge completion rates, reward redemption patterns, and engagement trends. - **White-label Program Builder**: White-label program builder enabling Perk to serve clients of different sizes and industries without rebuilding core infrastructure. #### Developer Platform & Extensibility Perk needed to be more than a closed system — it had to fit into clients' existing tech stacks. - **Comprehensive REST API**: Comprehensive REST API letting brands handle rewards, challenges, user data, and sync loyalty state with their own systems — enabling use cases from custom mobile apps to point-of-sale integrations. - **Real-time Webhook Streaming**: Real-time webhook streaming for challenge completions, reward claims, and user milestones. - **Aptos Integration**: Aptos integration enabling on-chain reward distribution and NFT-based loyalty mechanics. ## Why this partnership works Perk's team focuses on client relationships, go-to-market, and product direction. Deep product development work — infrastructure scaling, new integrations, self-service tooling — is essential for growth, but difficult to prioritize alongside serving existing clients. This partnership works because Bleu operates as an embedded product team: taking ownership of both strategic and execution work, thinking through downstream implications, and shipping production systems that don't require constant oversight. ### Quote > "You guys do such a nice job of thinking through what that means, where that impacts the rest of the platform, user experience, what the client's looking for. I'm not up at night worried that it's going to break." ## Outcome By taking ownership of product development without adding management overhead, Bleu helped Perk reduce launch time, build self-service tools that remove bottlenecks, and scale infrastructure to handle real volume. The core team stays focused on the business while the platform keeps pace with what the market is asking of it. ## Detailed Case Studies - **Legacy Takeover**: Taking over an outsourced codebase with no CI, no tests, no PR reviews — and modernizing it without downtime. - **AI-Powered Onboarding**: Production LLM pipeline that generates fully configured loyalty programs from a brand's website URL. - **M&M's Fun Club**: Enterprise-grade infrastructure rebuild and global brand launch with 99.984% uptime. - **Pedigree One True Loyalty**: Platform evolution from loyalty engine to full CRM with marketing automation and internationalization.