Membership
Membership represents the assignment of a particular member or individual to a loyalty program. An individual account can be a member of various loyalty programs; a membership exists for each one, containing the information related to the member.
The membership represents the relationship between members and the program and tier (across tier groups). It is the combining element, containing the typical data and advantages that a loyalty program membership brings (for example, earning points for specific business events, or specific participation benefits).
Prerequisites
You have defined a loyalty program. For more information, see Loyalty Management.
You have defined basic settings, loyalty programs, and channel integration in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management, by choosing 
Marketing
Loyalty Management – Design.
You have maintained basic settings, memberships, point accounts, member activities, and processing settings in Customizing for Customer Relationship Management, under: Loyalty Management – Execution.
Features
Standard Membership
In a standard membership, the point account set is exclusive to the member. Qualifying points are earned towards an upgrade of the member's tier, and redeemable points can be redeemed for products or services.
ExampleMichael Adams is a Platinum card holder (that is, he is in the Platinum tier) in a particular loyalty program. He has earned nearly 20,000 miles for flights made this year, and earned special points for the Valentine's Day promotion offered by the airline. He has earned nearly enough qualifying points to be upgraded to the Diamond tier. He can redeem his non-qualifying points for goods or services from a catalog.
End of the example.Shared Account Membership
In a shared account membership, members may belong to different tiers in the loyalty program, but the point account set is shared between members. Qualifying points are specific to each user because they may be in different tiers, but redeemable points are pooled and can be redeemed for products or services by any member.
ExampleKatrin Bauer and John Miller are good friends. Katrin is a Silver card holder in the World Flyer Plus program, and John is a Platinum card holder in the Senator program. The miles, points, and so on, that both of them earn go into the same point account set. Katrin and John earn their own qualifying points towards upgrades, but they share non-qualifying points, which can be redeemed by either of them.
End of the example.Group Membership
In a group membership, the members belong to the same tier in the loyalty program and share the same point account set. Qualifying points and redeemable points are pooled and can be redeemed for products or services by any member.
ExampleThe Moore family has a family card for a loyalty program. All point types earned by any member of the family go into the same point account set, and can be redeemed by any member of the family.
End of the example.Memberships can be split and merged as required.
Point Account Set
A point account set is the set of all point accounts for a particular membership type, where a point account is the balance of points of a specific point type. Point accounts can expire after a specified expiration date, or after a specified period of inactivity.
Point types include the following:
Qualifying points, which are earned towards a tier upgrade
Redeemable points, which can be transferred or merged, and can be redeemed for services or goods from a catalog
Points are processed against the rules you defined, and result in actions (such as change tier, update attributes, redeem points).
Customers can implement their own actions. Processing can happen either online or in batch mode.
Dynamic Attributes
You use dynamic attributes to track member behavior in the context of reward rules or your loyalty program, and to trigger member activities, for example, to change a member's tier when the member has earned sufficient points. Depending on the membership activity type, you can specify certain attributes.
Membership Cards
A membership card is created by default during creation of a membership.
Each member of a membership holds a membership card, which reflects the program and tier to which the card holder belongs. Membership cards can have different statuses, for example, lost or stolen, depending on information provided by the CRM customer, either by using Web Self-Services or Interaction Center.
Customers can create an external card number, for example, to support different standard codes. In member activities, the external card number can be used to identify a member.
Activities
You can transfer or donate points from one membership to another.
NotePoints to be transferred or donated must be in a point account set in the same loyalty program.
End of the note.You can split or merge memberships.
Before splitting or merging memberships, each member of the memberships affected must consent to the action. For more information, see Splitting and Merging of Memberships.