Startup "Miles" today launched a new iOS app [Direct Link] that grants its users exclusive rewards to use at places like Starbucks and Whole Foods every time they travel in a car, bus, on a bike, or on foot. The company aims for its app to be a ground transportation alternative to frequent flier miles, allowing users to earn discounts over time for travel that they likely perform more frequently than flying on an airplane (via The Verge).

The caveat is that for the full experience, the Miles app requires you to give it constant access to your location, so it can keep up with automatically tracking your movement and converting its "miles" currency into deals and offers. You can opt to choose "only while using the app," but you'll then need to remember to keep Miles open every time you travel in order to gain rewards.

Under Miles' rewards, you'll earn more miles for transportation that is more environmentally friendly: one real-world mile of walking/running grants you 10 reward miles, one mile of biking is worth five reward miles, a mile in a ride share vehicle is worth two, and a mile in a car is equivalent to one reward mile.

miles rewards app
At launch, you'll be able to trade these reward miles in for deals like $5 gift cards to Starbucks, Amazon, and Target, $42 off a first order from Hello Fresh, a complimentary rental on Audi's Silvercar service, and more. Other launch partners include Whole Foods, Canon, Bath & Body Works, and Cole Haan. When you trade in miles for rewards, some deals grant you with a barcode to scan at the physical checkout location (Starbucks), while others provide you with discount codes.

In terms of its tech, Miles works in the iPhone's background to automatically log each trip a user takes from point A to point B. The company says that the app "consumes almost no power" when stationary, and will only "minimally increase battery consumption" when in transit. The app detects drives in a vehicle with special formulas that don't rely solely on GPS for location data, helping to reduce battery consumption.

The app remembers your trips and logs them so you can revisit them later (including time of day, starting location, ending location, and distance) and fix any mistakes it might have made, like incorrectly logging a vehicle trip for a ride share. Additionally, there's a section of the app that The Verge describes as a "Venmo-style feed," showing how other users are earning and redeeming their miles.

In an attempt to get ahead of users worrying about their location data being constantly tracked and stored by a third party, Miles CEO Jigar Shah says that neither the company nor its partners get access to specific location information. Instead, user data that is gathered is more ambiguous, but the app still knows when users travel, how they travel, and what deals they clip -- which is then fed into a "predictive marketing AI platform" to match them with other appropriate deals.

Once more people in an area begin clipping the same coupons, Miles uses this vague user data to predict demand for the most popular rewards. Shah says this prediction of "near-future demand" plays into the creation of future rewards as well, and is the backbone of the entire app:

To better explain how this works, Shah says, imagine there are 50,000 Miles users. 10,000 of those might be within 0.3 miles of a Starbucks. Out of those users, Miles can figure out which ones are most likely to buy a coffee within the next hour based on the history of where and when those people have stopped at coffee shops in the past. From there, Miles can also tell which users are likely to go to Starbucks, which will go somewhere else, and which customers aren’t too picky.

Miles then lets Starbucks tailor different offers to those specific groups. Maybe a Dunkin Donuts loyalist sees a $5 Starbucks gift card show up in the app that’s redeemable for 1,500 miles, instead of the typical 3,000, and decides to break rank. The goal is to get deals in front of customers when they’re “most receptive,” Shah says. “We allow [businesses] to understand their own customers’ near future. What do they need in the next four hours, next four days, and next four weeks? We’re literally making predictions about what their customers need and when they need it.”

The CEO promises that this "anonymously" aggregated information is secure and "nothing of users' data leaves the system." Still, as The Verge points out, the app will essentially be a middleman between businesses and customers, holding the latter's personal data in its hands, which is believed to have been what brought big brands to support Miles at launch in the first place.

Despite promises of personal data privacy and security, Miles is launching in a time when online privacy is at the forefront of many users' awareness when signing up for a new service, or deciding to leave an old one. In the spring, the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, wherein more than 87 million Facebook users had their personal data gathered and used to reportedly influence their votes during the 2016 presidential election.

Another app that heavily relies on user location data also faced a scandal in the spring, with MoviePass coming under fire for CEO Mitch Lowe pointing out that it watches "how you drive from home to the movies" and how the company watches "where you go afterwards." Lowe eventually admitted he was "completely inaccurate" and that the app "has never tracked" users in the background, with the developers removing an "unused app location capability" shortly after the story was shared online.

Just last week, privacy researchers began pointing out that Venmo's publicly viewable feed of money exchanges (which has been around since the app launched), does not sit well in today's privacy-concerned climate. Now, more people have begun questioning why Venmo chose to have the feed's settings default to public sharing, likely resulting in many users who may not know their payment information is available for others to see.

Top Rated Comments

lolkthxbai Avatar
86 months ago
lol what? no way, this is literally turning the customer into the product
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AKDub Avatar
86 months ago
I wonder how long it will be until a company is just honest and says "Install our app, it has no features but we will track you and at the end of every month you get a $10 iTunes voucher"
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brian3uk Avatar
86 months ago
There a bunch of apps that do this sorta thing. None of them have ever been worth it. Why/how is this one different?
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dannyyankou Avatar
86 months ago
Cool, I got a 2,000 mile sign up bonus and can immediately redeem a $5 Starbucks gift card.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
I7guy Avatar
85 months ago
Next thing you know, advertisers will be posting billboards along certain routes people travel and making coupons available in newspapers, magazines, and online, and credit cards will be able to track your location and shopping habits by knowing where you use their card. That’s just simply crazy if those things happen!

How is this "news?" Or am I late to the game in that app developers can buy advertising in the form of news articles? I wonder how much it would cost for me to run an advertisement news article to peddle my feelings on how iOS UIx has degraded ever since iOS7 and that Jony Ive is not nearly as good a designer as he's imagined himself to be, in his quest towards thin, unserviceable, modifiable and generally weak-performing laptops compared to the competition? :)
Like how you managed to get a dig in at ios and Ive. Well done.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Zorn Avatar
86 months ago
Download it, sign up with a burner email, grant it location only while using the app, then as soon as you redeem the $5 gift card log out of the app and delete it from your device. Easy stuff and got a Starbucks gift card instantly.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 18

iOS 18.4 Will Include These New Features for Your iPhone

Wednesday February 5, 2025 7:15 am PST by
iOS 18.3 was released last month, so the first iOS 18.4 beta should be coming soon. iOS 18.4 is expected to be a more substantial update for the iPhone, with several new features and changes related to Apple Intelligence and beyond. Apple's website suggests that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, following beta testing. Below, we outline what to expect from the update so far. Apple...
iCloud General Feature Redux

iPhone Users Who Pay for iCloud Storage Receive an All-New Perk

Thursday February 6, 2025 11:21 am PST by
If you pay for iCloud storage on your iPhone, Apple has a new perk for you, at no additional cost. iCloud+ is the official name for Apple's paid iCloud storage plans, which range from 50GB for $0.99 per month to 12TB for $59.99 per month in the United States. iCloud+ plans already come with multiple perks for free, such as Hide My Email and HomeKit Secure Video, and now there is another one...
maxresdefault

An Apple TV Refresh is Coming in 2025 - Here's What You Should Know

Wednesday February 5, 2025 10:17 am PST by
Apple hasn't refreshed the Apple TV since 2022, but rumors suggest that we're finally going to get an update in 2025. We don't have a full picture of what to expect yet, but we have some hints on what's coming. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Updated A-Series Chip The current Apple TV 4K uses the A15 Bionic chip that was in the iPhone 13 lineup, and it's time for...
iPhone SE 4 Single Camera Thumb

iPhone SE 4 Launching as Soon as Next Week

Thursday February 6, 2025 3:30 pm PST by
Apple's next-generation iPhone SE could debut as soon as next week with a launch to follow later in February, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple isn't expected to hold an event for the iPhone SE 4, and will instead unveil the device through a press release. The iPhone SE 4 is expected to have an iPhone 14-style design, with Apple eliminating the thick bezels and Touch ID Home button of...
iOS 18

iOS 18.3.1 Update Coming Soon for iPhones

Thursday February 6, 2025 7:31 am PST by
Apple is internally testing iOS 18.3.1 for iPhones, according to our website's analytics logs, which have been a consistently reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. The software update should be released within the next few weeks. iOS 18.3.1 should be a minor update that addresses software bugs and/or security vulnerabilities. Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news and...
iCloud General Feature Redux

Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor

Friday February 7, 2025 2:37 am PST by
The British government has secretly demanded that Apple give it blanket access to all encrypted user content uploaded to the cloud, reports The Washington Post. The undisclosed order is said to have been issued last month, and requires that Apple creates a back door that allows UK security officials unencumbered access to encrypted user data worldwide – an unprecedented demand not before...
disney

Disney+ Loses 700,000 Subscribers Following Price Increase

Wednesday February 5, 2025 3:34 pm PST by
Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers worldwide in recent months, according to Disney's earnings results for the first quarter of 2025. Disney said it now has 124.6 million Disney+ subscribers, a decrease of 0.7 million compared to its subscriber numbers in the fourth quarter of 2024. The drop in subscribers comes after Disney+ prices increased in the fall. Disney+ with Ads went from $7.99 to...
apple wallet drivers license feature iPhone 15 pro

iPhone Driver's Licenses to Expand to These 7 U.S. States

Wednesday February 5, 2025 6:27 am PST by
In select U.S. states, residents can add their driver's license or state ID to the Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports and businesses, and in select apps. Below, we outline which U.S. states and territories offer the feature, and additional states that have committed to rolling it out in...