Jö Bonus Club misses plastic cards - data protectionists cheer!

Jö Bonus Club misses plastic cards - data protectionists cheer!

The Jö Bonus Club of the Rewe Group is the focus of the public discussion after the latest criticism of data protectionists. With over 4.5 million members, the club is one of the largest customer loyalty programs in Austria. In the course of measures to improve data protection, no more plastic cards will be issued for new members from June 2025. Only one email address and the date of birth are necessary to register. This is done in response to persistent criticism and high penalties of the data protection authority, which has been concerned with the Jö Bonus Club several times due to violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The authority imposed a penalty of 8 million euros in 2022, which is not legally binding, as well as an earlier sentence of 2 million euros in 2021, which will also be contested legally, Kurier .

The symptoms are primarily directed against the defective information of two million customers in terms of using their data. REWE International AG, the parent company, turned against the allegations and emphasized that the Jö Bonus Club acts legally and economically independently, whereby no customer data is passed on to Rewe.

changes in data processing

In order to include the feedback from the data protection officers, the Jö Bonus Club now states that they only collect the most necessary data. Existing members have the opportunity to convert their physical maps into digital memberships. In this changeover, personal data such as gender, last name and postal address are deleted, which can be assessed as a step to minimize data and compliance with the principles of the GDPR.

These principles include the "purpose binding" and "data minimization", according to which data may only be processed for specific purposes and only to the required scope. "Privacy by Design" and "Privacy by Default" are new principles that ensure that data protection will be integrated into technologies right from the start and that the default settings are data protection -friendly. The Rewe Group invested in the Jö Bonus Club, but had to accept considerable losses that amounted to almost 28 million euros. A ray of hope was the proven annual profit of 1.5 million euros in 2023, as Vienna.at reported.

Future vision and challenges

The Jö Bonus Club will continue to be confronted with the challenges of data protection. The members continue to be granted EST for purchases that can be converted or donated in premiums. The new guidelines of the GDPR provide clear requirements for consent to data processing. This must always be voluntary, understandable and accessible, which increases transparency for the customer. Essential consumer rights, such as the right to information and deletion, were also emphasized. These rights can help to regain the trust of customers into the company.

The coming months will show whether the changes and the remedial of the data protection problems can strengthen the trust of customers and whether the Jö Bonus Club can successfully master the critical challenges with regard to data protection concerns, while at the same time it is on the market.