Leal

Challenge

Leal is a loyalty and marketing automation platform used by large retailers across Latin America. Its platform powers loyalty programs for around 200 retailers and 5 million end customers, helping merchants keep shoppers coming back.

In early 2026, Leal's merchants started asking for gamification: a way to reward sustained behavior instead of one-off promotions. Leal wanted to offer leaderboards, XP and achievements as part of a new product that merchants could run alongside their traditional campaigns, and it set a target of launching by mid-year.

Leal wanted shoppers to interact with their loyalty program more often, and it wanted merchants to build gamification into their campaign strategies. The first phase focused on around ten of Leal's largest retailers, together representing millions of registered users.

Leal needed real-time rankings and points at retail scale, delivered quickly, without pulling engineers away from the core loyalty platform. Within weeks of first speaking with Trophy, Leal's product team was already showing leaderboard prototypes to merchants.

Solution

Leal needed a turnkey engine for points and rankings that it could embed in its own product under its own brand. Trophy's API handles XP and leaderboard rankings, while Leal keeps full control of the merchant and shopper experience and delivers the rewards itself.

Leal designed a merchant-facing tool where retailers create their own leaderboards, choose who takes part, decide what earns points and set the prizes. Trophy calculates the points and rankings behind it.

Leaderboards

Merchants create time-bound leaderboards with a name, description and validity period. They pick the audience by combining segments from Leal's customer data platform, for example all shoppers in Bogotá plus gold-tier loyalty members, and everyone in those segments competes on the same leaderboard.

Merchants can reward the top X shoppers or everyone above a minimum points threshold. If two shoppers tie, the first to reach the points total ranks higher. Retailers with several locations can run separate leaderboards per point of sale or city.

Points

Merchants choose which shopper behaviors earn XP: a purchase, a purchase above a minimum basket value, or purchase frequency. In Leal's prototype, for example, a first purchase earned 10 XP and a purchase above 15,000 pesos earned 250 XP.

XP milestones unlock intermediate prizes along the way, such as a discount on a featured drink, a free coffee or a coupon, with a final prize for the top-ranked shoppers. Leal fulfils each reward, whether that is a discount, extra loyalty points, a free product or cashback, while Trophy tracks the points and rankings and triggers them via webhooks.

A white-label experience for shoppers

Shoppers see their standing on a personalized leaderboard page, with their user and campaign IDs carried in the link, and inside the Leal app. Leal's backend pulls rankings from Trophy's API and passes them to both, so shoppers never see Trophy branding. Leal's campaign manager can also nudge shoppers with messages like "you're in fifth place, keep going to win" powered by Trophy webhooks.

Merchant configuration through Trophy's API

Leal built its merchant tool on top of Trophy's configuration APIs, so merchants set up and manage leaderboards without ever touching Trophy directly. Leal worked in a sandbox environment first, then mirrored the configuration into production.

Trophy also sends webhooks back to Leal's systems when a shopper earns XP or their rank changes, and those events trigger reward workflows in Leal's loyalty platform.

Implementation

Leal's team moved from first call to technical deep-dive in two weeks, and Trophy confirmed that every requirement in the prototype was achievable with its existing APIs, including the mid-year launch target. Leal then built on top of Trophy's API-first infrastructure, with its engineers working directly with Trophy's team in a dedicated communication channel throughout onboarding.

Two design choices kept the integration simple:

• Privacy by design. Leal identifies shoppers to Trophy using IDs it controls, which can be hashed to anonymize them in line with its data protection policy. No personal data is transmitted to Trophy.
• Webhooks into Leal's own workflows. Trophy sends a webhook to Leal's systems whenever a shopper earns XP or their rank changes, connecting Trophy to workflows Leal already runs. These include reward workflows in its loyalty platform and, potentially, push notifications.

Leal's first leaderboard dynamics went live with its first merchants on June 3, five weeks after the April 29 kickoff. A team of three built it: two engineers and a lead.

Results

Leal's first pilot ran leaderboard dynamics with a large retail partner in Panama, measured against a control group. Shoppers in the leaderboard group redeemed their loyalty points at a rate 22% higher than the control group.

The merchant responded well to the format, and the pilot gave Leal shopper data on which mechanics work best.

If you're adding gamification to a loyalty or rewards platform and want a team to design and ship it, see Trophy gamification services.