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Update: this post has been revised to reflect a correction in the explanation of LoyaltyMatch. While you can swap rewards points and miles for cash and merchandise, you cannot swap them for other rewards points or miles.
LoyaltyMatch has been in development for over a year now and the swapping commerce service is finally ready to open its doors to everyone. While LoyaltyMatch can be summed up as a swap site, there's really a lot more to it than just bartering with other users. This service is actually an ecommerce site where users can cash in their rewards points they've collected from frequent flier miles, credit cards, grocery stores, and more.
The LoyaltyMatch subscription-based marketplace is in fact a person-to-person system that lets each user buy or sell their rewards points. Say you've got a bunch of points on your American Express card, but you already have everything you'd want from the rewards catalog (such is the case with my mother). You can sell the points at LoyaltyMatch, and take the cash, or trade them for an item that you do want that happens to be part of another program.
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While LoyaltyMatch is set up to be a peer commerce site, there's obviously some type of relationship with the companies behind these rewards programs in order to make the service work. What I find interesting about this type of leveling of rewards programs is the ability for a company to extend its own rewards options without losing anything in the end. In the past decade or so, we've seen an enormous amount of growth from the rewards program sector, each expanding in its own right in order to beat out their competitors and lure in the new customers.