Cashback app Paymi is relaunching with a user experience overhaul to make its reward offering more accessible to a younger demographic.

Like some other digital rewards apps that have launched in recent years, Paymi users link a credit or debit card to their account, and receive cash back every time they purchase from one of its partner retailers.

Paymi was purchased by Toronto data analytics firm EQ Works this summer. Paymi GM Zane Mistry tells strategy that after a evaluation process, EQ wanted to put its own stamp on the app, to make it look a bit less “corporate” and more fun and unique to appeal to younger users.

For the relaunch, it really focused on the onboarding process and to help consumers better understand how it actually works and why card linking is necessary.

“We knew there was going to be some apprehension about linking a card or account to the app,” Mistry says. “And we wanted to remove that apprehension by really focusing on the safety and security behind the application, how the data was being utilized, and how it is anonymous.”

According to Mistry, the revamped app also focuses on the offer list itself, making it as scrollable and easy to navigate as possible.

“We didn’t want to confuse [users] with multiple ways of savings,” he says, as there are some apps that use point systems and there are all kinds of different ways to save.

Historically, digital couponing and cashback apps have been a bit complicated, Mistry admits, and Paymi’s messaging is centred around ease of use: it requires no coupon flipping, calculating points or taking photos of receipts.

Mistry says Paymi messaging is now really focused on cash back, front and centre for everything it does, whilst older positioning focused more on shopping opportunities.

The benefits of the recent acquisition, he says, is twofold: EQ Works has an internal creative design team that Paymi is leveraging going forward for the majority of its creative work. It also benefits from leveraging EQ Works’ large consumer acquisition data pool, particularly its platforms to execute its programmatic and get its message out in the most strategic way possible.

Paymi allows merchants the opportunity to run strategic offers to drive incremental sales by leveraging the data sets it has, with customized offers based on previous shopping behaviours. Paymi wants to better utilize data about where consumers are shopping outside of their partner merchant stores to generate further shopper marketing related activities.

Going forward, Paymi is looking to do more co-marketing with merchant partners, such as Indigo, Burger King, Mary Brown, Pizza Pizza, Indochino and Leon’s, and leverage those brands’ equity and awareness, promoting through offers and as standalone app as well.

Since its inception, Paymi has securely managed over 135 million transactions, and processed over $18 billion in customer spend. Mistry says the app’s advantage, compared to other options likes Drop, derives from multiple verticals but particularly strength in dining and entertainment, but that it really wants to provide consumers a wealth of options.

Since the brand is wholly digital, Mistry says Paymi is doing a combination of online, social and programmatic advertising for the best opportunity for conversion, whether in-store or online.