In Tillypad XL you can authorise promotion categories not only for your own clients, but also for customers of external systems. This can be useful when implementing client loyalty programs together with your partners. For example, the guests of a hotel can receive discounts in the hotel restaurant, a health center cardholder might use his/her card to receive a discount when dining at a partner restaurant, or shopping in a certain retail chain may offer bonuses redeemable at an entertainment centre.

In order to use an external company's promotion categories, you need to import them into Tillypad XL so that you can set up a relationship between these and the promotion categories used in your system. You will also need to import the point types of the external company and establish a relationship between these and your own point types.

To configure settings that allow you to relate promotion categories and point types of external systems to promotion categories and point types in Tillypad XL, use the Promotion category authorisation device parameters directory.

If a promotion category authorisation device recognizes an ID presented by a client of an external system (for example, a client card), this client will be treated as your own customer. This means that the external client can redeem promotions and accrue rewards points.

IDs of imported promotion categories may belong to a different ID type than that of internal promotion category IDs. In this case, imported promotion categories are authorised on special promotion category authorisation devices that must be set up on POS terminals in your business or, if applicable, in its divisions. These devices must perform promotion category authorisation functions. For each device, you must specify a parameter from the Promotion category authorisation device parameters directory.