Rewards Video Guides
Get a high-level overview of Rewards with our video guides. Video guides include details of the latest feature customizations and settings.
What is Rewards?
An employee rewards and recognition program celebrates employee contributions and achievements. Employees earn coins they can redeem for rewards like gift cards, prepaid cards, donations, premium gifts, or company swag.
Why Rewards is Important
Rewards programs boost morale, improve performance, and reduce turnover.
Lower turnover: Replacing employees can cost up to 2× their salary, while engaged teams see 25–59% lower turnover
Higher productivity: Engaged employees drive 21% higher profitability and 41% lower absenteeism
Why Rewards with Matter
Matter makes rewards easy, flexible, and built for Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Rewards People Love: 10,000+ reward options across 200+ countries, plus custom rewards
Weekly Coin Resets: Encourages consistent, timely recognition vs. monthly “use-it-late” behavior
Low-Cost Funding: Avoid high fees with rewards prepay (0%) or pay-as-you-go (3% fee vs. typical 6–8%)
Coins & Rewards Introduction
Matter uses a coin-based system. Coins are the mechanism for redeeming rewards. The next two sections will explain coins and rewards, and how they are used together. Important Note: You DO NOT prepay for coins with Matter. Only when an Admin approves a reward request from earned coins is your funding method charged.
How Coins Work
Coin Conversion Rate
10 Matter Coins is equivalent to $1 USD. For example, 250 Coins = $25 USD Gift Card. Our coin conversion rate is fixed for several reasons - simplification of budget, fairness for sending coins to international teammates.
Coin Wallet/Bank
Coin Allowances and Coins Earned are the types of coins in the coin wallet/bank. These two types are independent of each other.
Coin Allowances: Coins that users can only give away with kudos. Coin allowances will reset based on the reset frequency (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly). For example, if you have 80 coins per week to give away and only give away 50, then next week, you'll have 80 coins to give away. Coin allowances do not roll over.
Coins Earned: Coins users receive from kudos, celebrations, etc. These coins are only used to redeem for rewards, not give away. They do not reset nor expire.
Coin Allowances
There are two types of coin allowances you can set.
Default Allowance: This coin allowance is set for all Matter members (i.e., Company-Wide Allowance). The default amount is 80 coins per member per week.
Custom Allowance: This coin allowance is set for specific Matter members (i.e., Individual Allowance). The Custom Allowance will override the Default Allowance. This is ideal for giving admins/managers extra coins for special recognition.
Important Note: To estimate your Default Coin Allowance, we'd strongly recommend using our conservative Rewards Budgeting Calculator.
FAQs about Coins
Reward Redemption Process
Team member makes a reward request in the Rewards Store web app.
Admin is notified of the reward request in Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Admin approves the reward request, and the funding method (prepay or pay-as-you-go) is subsequently charged. Reminder: You don't prepay for coins.
Member receives the gift card or prepaid card automatically to their email, and is notified of the reward approval in Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Direct Rewards
Direct Rewards let Admins send rewards directly, without using coins. Send internally to your team or externally to contractors, partners, and vendors, making them a flexible choice for global teams.
Digital: gift cards, prepaid cards, and monetary options like PayPal or Venmo
Physical (shipped): Premium Gifts and Company Store items like branded company swag
Reward Options
Gift Cards, Donations, and Monetary Options
Matter provides 3,500+ gift cards, donations, and monetary options across 200+ countries. We partner with some of the world's largest reward providers to deliver rewards quickly and securely.
Premium Gifts
Premium Gifts are physical products employees can redeem with their Matter coins, offering a more tangible, personalized reward experience.
7,500+ options across top brands
Shipping is included in the coin cost (most items ship free).
Taxes (0–10%) are covered by your company and based on your shipping address.
Company Store
The Company Store is where your company's own rewards live, alongside gift cards and premium gifts in the same rewards store. There are two types:
1) Branded Company Swag
Branded Company Swag puts your logo on high-quality apparel, drinkware, bags, office items, tech, and accessories (1,900+ options). Matter prints and ships every order worldwide, so there's no inventory to warehouse and nothing for you to fulfill.
Add your logo in seconds with Create my Swag, or hand-pick and customize each product.
Item, shipping, and taxes are all included in the coin cost, so employees see the full price up front.
Employees get order confirmation and shipping notifications with tracking in Slack or Microsoft Teams.
2) Custom Rewards
Custom Rewards are perks your company fulfills directly. There's no cost through Matter since you handle delivery. Popular options include:
Experiences: lunch with the CEO, a reserved parking spot
Time: an extra vacation day, an early Friday
Other ideas: a donation to a company charity, team swag you already have on hand
Rewards Billing
Matter provides two funding methods for how rewards are billed.
Pay-As-You-Go: Credit Card on File - By default, approved reward requests are charged to your credit card, which includes a 5% and a $0.35 per transaction processing fee.
Prepay: Fund a Rewards Account Balance - Avoid fees and reduce frequent credit card transactions with rewards prepay. Options include:
0% Fee = Send ACH or Wire Transfer from your Bank
3.5% Fee = Prepay with your Credit Card
FAQs about Rewards