Do my customers need to download an app?
No. Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are already on every modern phone — there is nothing to download, no account to create and no password to forget. Your customer scans a code at your counter and the card is in their wallet. That is the whole reason this works where loyalty apps did not: the thing that kills a loyalty program is the install, and there is no install.
I'm on Square, and I think it already does this.
It does — Square added Apple Wallet loyalty passes and it's included in your plan. Two honest questions, then: is it switched on and are your staff using it, and do you know what it's telling you? The tool isn't the hard part. Nobody at Square designs your reward, writes your monthly offer, or reads the numbers back to you. That's what you'd be paying me for. If you'd rather I looked at your Square loyalty dashboard first and told you honestly whether you need me, I'll do that.
My customers are older — they won't use their phone for this.
Fair. Do they pay with their phone? The card sits in the same place as the card they already tap with. And you keep your paper cards for anyone who prefers them — the two run side by side. But rather than guess: how many people paid you with a phone today?
My staff will never remember to scan it.
That's the real risk and it's the right thing to ask. So: one laminated card by the till with five steps, training at a shift change rather than an email, and I check in at day seven — because if scans are low in week one it's dead by week six. I'll also suggest something small for whoever signs up the most customers in month one. Thirty dollars of your money, and it's the difference between working and not.
Can someone cheat it — edit the card, give themselves stamps?
No. The stamps do not live on the card; they live in our database in Canada, and the card is a signed picture of that record — Apple and Google refuse an edited one. A stamp can only be added by your counter code, which is rate-limited to one per visit and two a day, or by your staff with a PIN that locks after five wrong tries. Rewards are redeemed on the staff page, which reads the real count, so a screenshot of a "full" card gets nobody a free coffee.
How safe is my customers' information?
We collect a first name and nothing else — no email, no phone number — so there is very little to lose. It is held on servers in Toronto, backed up every day, and never leaves Canada. Your list is isolated from every other client's, it belongs to you by contract, and if anything ever went wrong I am bound to tell you within 72 hours.
What happens to my customer list if I leave?
It's yours, it says so in the contract, and I'll export it for you within ten business days of you asking — whether you're leaving or not. I'm not holding your customers hostage.
Will it definitely increase my sales?
I won't promise that, and be careful of anyone who does. What I can tell you is exactly what it has to produce to pay for itself — usually about one extra visit a day — and after month one you'll have real numbers instead of a promise: enrolments, visits per customer, redemptions. If those are flat after sixty days, cancel. It's month to month after the first three.
I found software online for twenty-five dollars a month.
You did, and it's good software — I use tools like it. What you'd be paying me for is the part that isn't software: designing an offer that actually changes behaviour, building the card, training your staff, pushing an offer to the card every month, and telling you whether it's working. If you have four hours a month to do that yourself, buy the $25 tool. I mean that. If you don't, that's the job.
