LOYALTY TECHNOLOGY & SOLUTIONS

Capillary Technologies to Acquire SessionM from Mastercard for $20 Million

Capillary Technologies

27 Febraury 2026 

Capillary Technologies has agreed to acquire SessionM, the customer engagement and loyalty business formerly owned by Mastercard, in an all-cash deal valued at $20 million. The strategic acquisition accelerates Capillary’s global expansion in loyalty technology and adds more than $35 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) to its portfolio.

SessionM, a cloud-based engagement and rewards platform used by major enterprise brands around the world, will be integrated into Capillary’s AI-powered loyalty and customer engagement suite. Under the terms of the deal, a specialised team from SessionM will transition to Capillary to ensure continuity and expertise in servicing existing clients.

Publicly available information indicates that SessionM has served a range of enterprise clients across retail, restaurant, fitness and consumer brands. Verified or widely reported customers include Lowe’s, Red Robin, Lotus’s (Thailand), Barry’s, and Kudu (Saudi Arabia), with historical industry reporting also citing brands such as Chipotle, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Huggies, and Air Canada at various points around the time Mastercard acquired SessionM in 2019. While neither Capillary nor Mastercard has published a full, current customer roster, the structure of the $20 million acquisition — which includes SessionM’s technology assets, operations and more than $35 million in annual recurring revenue — strongly indicates that existing client contracts will transfer to Capillary as part of the deal. In line with standard SaaS acquisition practice, SessionM customers are therefore expected to continue receiving support under Capillary ownership, with a phased integration or migration onto Capillary’s broader AI-driven loyalty and engagement platform over time, although specific timelines or individual client transition plans have not been publicly disclosed.

Why Mastercard Is Selling SessionM

Mastercard acquired SessionM in 2019 to broaden the range of loyalty and engagement tools available to its clients. But as the payments giant continues to refine its strategy toward next-generation payments, data solutions and embedded value services, SessionM — a standalone enterprise loyalty platform — was no longer central to its core roadmap. Divesting the business allows Mastercard to focus resources on its broader payments and commerce infrastructure while finding a specialised loyalty-tech home for SessionM’s platform and clients.

What Mastercard’s Loyalty Proposition Might Look Like Going Forward

Post-sale, Mastercard’s engagement with loyalty is expected to shift away from operating a standalone, enterprise loyalty platform toward enabling loyalty capabilities through its broader payments and commerce services. While specific details of Mastercard’s new loyalty proposition have not been formally announced, several trends provide insight into how the company may position itself:

• Payments-centric loyalty tools: Rather than owning a full loyalty stack like SessionM, Mastercard is likely to embed loyalty and rewards capabilities directly into its payments products, leveraging its transaction data and network insights to support partners’ programs.

• Data and identity-oriented solutions: Mastercard has been emphasizing digital identity, personalised payments and secure, trusted interfaces — areas that can support contextual rewards and offers without the overhead of running enterprise program software. This may mean co-developing loyalty features with banks, fintechs and merchants that are integrated with Mastercard’s network services.

• AI-driven engagement: With broader industry focus shifting to AI and machine-learning in commerce, Mastercard’s loyalty value could manifest in real-time offer personalisation, risk-scored incentives and intelligent segmentation embedded within payment journeys, rather than in a discrete external platform.

In other words, Mastercard is likely to maintain a critical but more foundational role in the loyalty ecosystem — powering offers, insights and engagement through its payments infrastructure rather than operating a standalone SaaS product. Analysts see this as consistent with its broader transformation toward next-generation digital and programmable commerce platforms.

Synergies the Acquisition May Bring to Capillary

The SessionM acquisition is more than a revenue add-on for Capillary — it is designed to create strategic and operational synergies across multiple dimensions of its business:

Enhanced Capabilities & Product Expansion
SessionM’s cloud-native engagement platform brings robust real-time personalization, omnichannel campaign tools and rewards management capabilities that complement Capillary’s existing AI-driven loyalty stack. Integrating these technologies could deliver a more unified and feature-rich solution for enterprise clients.

Broader Geographic Reach
SessionM’s footprint in North America and Europe — particularly among large retail, airline and QSR brands — expands Capillary’s presence in regions where it has grown more slowly. This fits Capillary’s stated strategy to deepen market penetration in the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

Cross-Sell and Upsell Opportunities
By bringing SessionM’s substantial enterprise customer base into its fold, Capillary gains access to cross-sell and upsell opportunities across a wider portfolio of services — from customer data platforms (CDPs) to advanced analytics and loyalty program orchestration.

Data Scale & Learning
A larger combined client base means more behavioural and engagement data flowing through Capillary’s systems. According to loyalty analysts, scale in data can enable faster insights, improved personalization and stronger ROI measurement — all of which enhance the competitive value of loyalty platforms.

Operational Efficiencies
Consolidating technology stacks and support teams may unlock efficiencies in delivery, maintenance and support. Over time, migrating SessionM clients onto Capillary’s platform could also increase margins and streamline product roadmaps.

Global Loyalty Organisation Take:

Industry commentators and loyalty professionals see the acquisition as reflective of a broader consolidation trend in the loyalty SaaS market:

End of “Loyalty as Commodity” Era
Experts suggest that as core loyalty product capabilities become commoditised, scale and differentiation through acquisition are becoming defining competitive advantages in the market. Larger platforms can cross-leverage data, deliver measurable ROI and support more complex loyalty strategies.

Shift Toward Measurable Business Outcomes
Some analysts argue that consolidation could reshape how brands procure loyalty technology — moving away from feature checklists toward outcomes like revenue uplift, retention impact and insight-driven personalization.

Capillary Positioned as a Market Consolidator
Given its series of acquisitions in recent years — including Persuade, Brierley+Partners, Kognitiv and others — Capillary is viewed by industry insiders as a consolidator in the loyalty tech space, and this latest deal may herald further M&A activity.

Overall, the acquisition underscores how loyalty platforms are evolving from standalone campaign engines into integrated, analytics-driven engagement ecosystems powering deeper brand-customer relationships across global markets.

Source: GLO