Beenz baked as rival buys out the opposition

NEWS Net loyalty scheme Ipoints has moved to the top of the UK heap as it hoovered up two competitors as rival Beenz struggles for funding. And the company claims to be poised to break even next quarter as it emerges from the host of similar schemes launched during the dot-com boom. Ipoints has paid 15 per cent of its own shares for Web Rewards and its 140,000 customers, with backing from publishing giant Bertelsmann. The company has also taken on the debt and 50,000 users of UK rival Surfmiles. Aaron O'Sullivan, managing director of Ipoints, said: "A lot of dot-coms went for the European adventure and got their fingers burnt. These schemes largely work only in one country - people don't want to buy the same things other nationalities do and they don't want to travel to spend their points. And really, there's really only space for one scheme per country." Ipoints has 520,000 registered users and around 470,000 unique visitors to its website each month. It is about to launch a co-branded scheme with consumer magazine and site Which? O'Sullivan predicted it will have one million customers by the end of the year. Ipoints is backed by venture capital firm Durlacher and has cash reserves from two rounds of funding. O'Sullivan says he plans to expand offline to challenge the Canadian loyalty champion, Airmiles.