Under the system, anyone can buy a card from Wintel and swipe it after he makes a purchase at any of the selected stores to earn credit.

"This is similar to the concept of customer loyalty programme of 'Air Miles' operating in North America," Faisal Alim, managing director of mobile phone marketing company Wintel Ltd, told reporters at a briefing yesterday.

Currently, customers do not get any incentive on small amount of shopping but CIC will be the first-ever customer rewarding programme for every taka spent.

Customers will have rewarding point for purchasing something from a store and get reward on the basis of accumulated points while customers shop around. At any stage of time customer can claim various kinds of gifts or cash vouchers on the basis of accumulated points, he said.

For each purchase of Tk 50, customers will get 1 point and it will be calculated accordingly. There will be a CIC point processor machine, which has to be kept at the cash counter and at the time of making payment of regular shopping, customer will produce CIC at the counter to get points.

Point will be counted with every purchase and will be updated online at the central server. Customers will be able to claim gifts or rewards after gathering 300 points.

An attractive range of gifts will be offered under the programme, said Mahbubul Alam, executive director of the Wintel.

"We hope to launch the programme on December 16," Faisal added. Customers need to spend only Tk 25 to get a subscription to CIC for life.

Shop owners will be also benefited from the programme. We are in talks with super stores including Agora and banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. Multi level marketers will also be included on the list.