Omar Rafii’s résumé doesn’t read like that of a hospitality guru. Before founding Krowd, the U.K.-based fintech that helps banks offer meaningful dining rewards to build loyalty, he spent more than six years in the oil industry in Europe and the Middle East. A self-professed food lover who traveled frequently, he often found himself on the hunt for new restaurants, but the recommendations never quite hit the mark.

“I’d look for a restaurant to eat at, and you’d get these lists of best restaurants in Singapore or New York,” Rafii explains. “It was either the average Joe’s favorite, based on thousands of generic reviews, or a blogger’s personal list. And I wasn’t Joe, and I wasn’t that blogger.”

That disconnect sparked a powerful idea: What if dining discovery could feel personal, simple, relevant and tailored to real preferences? Enter Krowd, named for its ability to harness the wisdom of the crowd to deliver smarter recommendations. Rafii and his team began by building a personalized recommendation algorithm that asks users for three restaurants they love and, in return, suggests six others with similar attributes. The goal was to cut through the noise and eliminate the paradox of choice that overwhelms so many people when choosing where to eat in a big city.

For the first few years, Krowd operated on a business-to-consumer model, but in 2019 the team realized that model was not sustainable in the long term. Still, they knew they had created something special with their personalization algorithm. That’s when the light bulb went on: Why not apply personalized targeting to offers linked to payment cards?

Many traditional loyalty programs offer discounts on groceries, gas and furniture, which are useful but not always inspiring. Rafii believed that the best way to build loyalty among cardholders was by giving them offers with great experiences. Considering Krowd’s strength in the hospitality sector, and the amazing experiences people seek there, they realized that restaurants were the perfect partner.

From there, Krowd set itself apart by transforming how restaurants approached offers and engagement. Instead of blanket discounts, Krowd partners with banks, airlines, telcos and others to offer cash-back rewards at participating restaurants, and its platform uses analytics to track campaign performance and demonstrate real return on investment.

“At Krowd, we always start with the restaurant,” Rafii says. “When they succeed, everything else follows.”

This restaurant-first mindset, combined with a team made up of hospitality veterans, has helped Krowd build deep trust in the industry. Today it boasts a 90% partner retention rate.

Though Krowd got off the ground just as the pandemic was shutting down in-person dining, that actually proved to be a turning point. Many restaurants — especially ones that had been slow to embrace digital tools and data-driven decision-making — realized that digitization could be a make-or-break moment. And those that initially believed that they didn’t need to offer discounts after the pandemic soon thought otherwise. Krowd was ready.

Those realizations played right into Krowd’s strengths — helping restaurants fill seats with targeted, measurable campaigns. In a crowded, competitive market, data-driven promotions have gone from nice-to-have to mission critical.

Today, Krowd helps bring diners through the doors of some of the U.K.’s most notable restaurant groups, including Nobu and Gordon Ramsay. To scale the company further and push the boundaries of what’s possible in the rewards space, Krowd recently joined Mastercard’s award-winning startup engagement program, Start Path. The partnership marks a natural evolution of a long-standing relationship between the two companies, built on a shared vision of smarter, more seamless customer experiences.

While Krowd already works with Mastercard to power traditional cash-back programs, Start Path offers a runway to think bigger, helping the company move beyond standard rewards toward real-time, instant discounts at the point of sale, putting the customer experience at the heart of everything they do. 

“We’re not just creating offers,” Rafii says. “We’re creating moments, one dining experience at a time. And that — like Mastercard says — is priceless.”