Sunoco to shift Go Rewards and Journie Rewards to VLG, starting in early 2027

Two loyalty programs, two countries, one back end. On Monday, Nov. 9, Sunoco Retail LLC and Velocity Logic Group announced a multiyear enterprise partnership. Under it, VLG's Loyalty Cloud and Loyalty Switch platform will run both Sunoco's Go Rewards and Journie Rewards, with a phased rollout starting in early 2027, according to the companies' release distributed through EIN Presswire.

Journie Rewards came with Parkland Corp., the Calgary-based fuel marketer and convenience retailer. Sunoco closed that acquisition in November 2025, CSP Daily News reported, and Convenience Store News put the price at $9.1 billion. A year later, the customer-facing side of that deal is getting a single platform.

Members won't notice much. Accounts, point balances and rewards move over automatically, and the companies say earning and redeeming will continue without interruption during the transition. The bigger change is for the people behind the program: whoever owns offers, partner deals and the app at a fuel retailer that now covers two countries and several brands.

Everything VLG now runs for Sunoco

The scope is wide. VLG will migrate, operate and support Sunoco's loyalty programs at thousands of fuel and convenience locations in the U.S. and Canada. It will also design, build and run Sunoco's mobile loyalty apps, keep Pay with Points redemption going, and expand connections with Sunoco's financial services, retail and grocery partners. CSP Daily News executive editor Hannah Hammond's report and the NACS Daily writeup describe the deal in the same terms.

The enterprise license also gives Sunoco VLG's full toolset, Convenience Store News reported. That includes the Convenience Store Loyalty Suite, real-time enrollment, connections to partner networks and TargetAll, a tool that uses the payment card to send offers to customers whether or not they've joined a loyalty program. VLG describes its Loyalty Switch and Loyalty Cloud as software that coordinates rewards, discounts and partner offers in real time across multiple programs, payment methods and partner networks.

One part of this deal already exists. VLG runs Sunoco's co-branded credit card program on the same platform, according to the release and NACS. So the partnership extends a working relationship to apps, enrollment and both loyalty brands. VLG CEO Ray Stanton III called Sunoco's loyalty setup one of the most complex multi-brand operations in the industry, spanning two countries, several fuel brands and a growing group of partners.

In practice, the platform decides which discount a driver gets at the pump, using whatever that driver presents: a loyalty account, a co-branded card, points from a partner bank or just a payment card. When one operator runs all of those connections, the retailer can build an offer once and send it out once. For a chain that bought its second loyalty program, that is the practical payoff.

A card launch one day later

On Tuesday, Sunoco and Credit One Bank launched the Sunoco Rewards Plus Mastercard, C-Store Dive senior editor Jessica Loder reported. New cardholders save 60 cents a gallon for their first 30 days. After that, the card saves up to 12 cents a gallon at participating Sunoco-branded stations: 9 cents for paying with the card, plus 3 cents for linking it to the Sunoco app and paying through the app.

Cash back covers the first $5,000 of eligible purchases each calendar year: 3% on in-store purchases at participating Sunoco locations, 2% on dining and grocery, and 1% on everything else. After that, it's 1% on everything. The card is tilted toward the store as well as the pump, which fits a fuel distributor that also wants shoppers inside.

Three of the new card's 12 cents per gallon only show up when the card is linked to the Sunoco app, and Sunoco's loyalty apps are now VLG's to design and run. The app has become part of the price at the pump. Any glitch in linking a card or applying a discount shows up in what the customer pays, so the platform behind the app is a pricing system as much as a marketing one.

Branded sites far outnumber Sunoco's own stores

These numbers show the size of the job. Sunoco runs about 400 U.S. stores itself, CSP Daily News reported, but the brand appears on roughly 5,700 U.S. locations. That's about 14 branded sites for every company store, by simple division. Because the card's fuel discount applies at participating Sunoco-branded stations, the program clearly depends on sites Sunoco doesn't run day to day. Any loyalty platform here has to work at a dealer's pump as well as at a company store.

The number of stores keeps changing, too. In 2026 alone, Sunoco added 56 Duck Thru Food Stores from Jernigan Oil, 36 stores from Pops Mart Fuel and 48 retail and fuel sites from Capitol Petroleum Group. Its $600 million Offen Petroleum deal closed Oct. 27. On the third-quarter call, CEO Joseph Kim said Sunoco had beaten its target of at least $500 million a year in bolt-on acquisitions and called that amount a modest bar for 2027 and beyond. He also said Parkland was a big part of a quarter in which net income rose to $499 million from $137 million a year earlier.

If acquisitions keep coming at that pace, newly acquired stores could arrive with their own rewards, apps or card setups. The deal suggests Sunoco wants a platform built to run several programs at once rather than one that has to be re-engineered every time a new program shows up. That's an inference, but it fits what VLG says its switch is designed to do.

When one platform is too much

Not every retailer needs this. A single-banner chain with one rewards program, no co-branded card and no bank redemption partners has few connections to manage, and a large orchestration platform could cost more than the problem it solves. The setup pays off when brands, countries and payment partners all have to honor the same offer, and that describes Sunoco after Parkland.

Running everything through one platform also makes the phasing important. The companies are moving both programs in stages rather than all at once, and they promise that balances and redemptions won't be interrupted. That promise is what members will notice first, well before any new offer.

Questions for a retailer facing a similar merger

For loyalty and IT leaders at multi-banner fuel retailers, especially those still running a program that came with an acquisition, Sunoco's terms give useful questions to ask any platform vendor:

• Can existing accounts, point balances and earned rewards move over automatically, with earning and redemption running through every phase?
• Can the platform send offers to card holders who haven't enrolled in loyalty, as TargetAll is designed to do?
• Do the co-branded card, partner points redemption and mobile app run on the same platform, so one discount rule works across all of them?

Sunoco's answers will start to show in early 2027, when the first phase goes live in a footprint that crosses the U.S.-Canada border. The thing to watch is whether the 3-cent app discount works the same way at a dealer-run Sunoco station as it does at a company store.