Published July 29, 2026
How to create a digital loyalty card for your shop
The cardboard card has two problems that printing more cards will not fix: it gets lost, and it does not let you talk to whoever is carrying it. A digital loyalty card solves both, and setting one up is a good deal less work than people tend to imagine. Here is what it takes.
Why cardboard falls short
A large share of the cardboard cards handed out are never redeemed, and not because the customer did not want to: the card ends up in a coat, in the car, or in a drawer. Every lost card is a customer who had decided to come back and who you stop counting. Cardboard is also anonymous: you do not know how many people are one stamp from the reward, and you cannot tell them. Everything that happens between one visit and the next is out of reach.
What a Wallet pass is
Apple Wallet and Google Wallet come installed on practically every current phone. A pass is a card inside that wallet, sitting next to a transport ticket or a boarding pass. The customer adds it by scanning a QR code, without downloading an app or creating an account. From then on the pass updates itself: when you add a stamp, the number changes on their phone. And because it lives in the system wallet, you can send a message to their lock screen without asking permission for anything else.
The steps, in order
First decide the format and the threshold, which is the only hard decision: how many stamps and what reward. Second, brand the pass with your logo and your colour, so what sits in the customer's wallet is your shop and not the name of the tool. Third, print the counter QR and put it where people pay, which is where the phone is already in hand. Fourth, decide what you will stamp with: any phone or tablet with a camera will do, including an old one. Fifth, tell your team in one sentence, because whoever is on shift is the one who will offer it.
What it costs and how long it takes
The real cost has two parts. The subscription, which for this kind of service tends to sit between twenty and thirty euros a month per shop. And the cost of the rewards, which is not a marketing expense but margin you give up: if you give away one coffee in ten, you are discounting around ten per cent on what your most loyal customers spend. That number is worth working out before you fix the threshold. In time, setup is a matter of minutes; what takes weeks is getting your regulars signed up, so it pays to offer it at every till transaction for the first month.
Before you start
Check three things. That you can export your customer data if you ever change tool, because that list is yours and it is the most valuable thing the programme produces. That the pass can genuinely carry your brand. And that stamping takes less time than taking payment, because anything that lengthens the queue at peak will quietly stop being used by your own team. If all three answers are good, the rest is a matter of putting it on the counter and telling people.