A digital loyalty card for cafés and coffee shops
Your regulars already carry a coffee card — it is in a coat pocket, soggy, or lost. The same card in Apple Wallet cannot be lost, updates the moment your barista scans it, and puts your shop on the lock screen between visits.
Recommended card · Stamp card
The reward structure that works here
Ten stamps, one free coffee
Stamps are right for a café because the basket barely moves: a flat white costs what a flat white costs, so one stamp per visit is obviously fair and needs no explaining. Ten is the number people already expect from paper, and at four or five visits a week a regular gets there inside a fortnight — long enough to be worth something, short enough that nobody gives up. Resist raising it. A card that takes two months to complete is a card that gets abandoned at stamp four.
What changes at the counter
The queue does not slow down
Your barista scans the customer's phone from behind the machine. It is one motion, roughly the time it took to reach for the stamp.
Quiet Tuesdays get a nudge
Send a push to the pass of everyone who has not been in for three weeks — it lands on the lock screen, not in a spam folder, and it costs nothing to send.
You find out which reward works
Free coffee, free pastry, free upgrade: the dashboard shows redemption rates side by side instead of a hunch about what people prefer.
The honest objections
My customers are older and will not want an app.
There is no app. The card goes into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, which is already on the phone — the same place their boarding passes and event tickets live. Enrolling is scanning a QR code on the counter and tapping Add. If someone genuinely does not want it, keep a stack of paper cards next to the till; the two run side by side without any bookkeeping on your part.
I will end up giving away coffee to people who were coming anyway.
Partly, yes — that is true of every loyalty scheme including the paper one. What changes is that you can see it. The dashboard shows visit frequency before and after enrolment, so after a month you can tell whether the card moved anyone from two visits a week to three, and adjust the threshold rather than guess.
Questions
How long does it take to set up?
Under an hour. Create the card, upload your logo, print the QR code from the dashboard and put it by the till. You do not need a POS integration — the card works alongside whatever you already use to take payment.
Can I stamp more than once for a bigger order?
Yes. The scanner lets your staff add more than one stamp in a single scan, which is the usual answer for someone buying a round for the office.
What stops someone screenshotting the card and sharing it?
Stamps are added against the pass, not the picture. A screenshot has no live serial to scan and will not accrue anything — and the scan happens in front of your staff either way.
Turn regulars into members this week.
Start your first digital loyalty card with a 14-day free trial — or drop your email and we will send a two-minute setup walkthrough.
14-day free trial. No credit card needed.