We publish this comparison knowing we are one of the options in it. So the rule we set ourselves is simple: every platform below gets a section explaining when it is the better choice than Loonine, and those sections are real. A comparison that concludes the author wins every category is worth nothing to a reader and gets ignored by anyone evaluating seriously.
What should a small business look for?
The single most important factor in a loyalty platform is enrolment rate: the share of customers who join when offered. A platform with excellent analytics and a ten per cent enrolment rate delivers less than a basic one at sixty per cent, because a loyalty programme nobody joins is a subscription with no return.
Enrolment rate is driven almost entirely by friction. In descending order of damage: requiring an app install, requiring account creation, requiring an email address, requiring a QR scan, requiring anything at all from the customer at the counter.
- Does the customer have to install anything? If yes, expect to lose most of them.
- How many seconds does enrolment take during your busiest hour?
- Does the card update itself, or does the customer have to reopen something?
- Can you message lapsed customers, and through which channel?
- Does it work in your country, and in your customers' language?
- What does it cost per month against your realistic customer count?
Loopy Loyalty: the established choice
Loopy Loyalty effectively created the digital stamp card category and remains the most established option. It delivers stamp cards to both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, has a long track record, and carries a large body of independent reviews, which matters if you want reassurance before committing.
Choose Loopy Loyalty over Loonine if you want the longest track record in the category, you want to read extensive third-party reviews first, and your counter is not so busy that QR-based sign-up is a constraint.
Stamp Me: the broadest feature set
Stamp Me offers more features than most competitors, including gamified reward mechanics and optional physical stamping hardware for high-volume sites. It also publishes an unusually large library of customer case studies, which is useful evidence when you are deciding.
Choose Stamp Me over Loonine if you want gamification, if dedicated stamping hardware would help at a high-volume site, or if you want to read many published case studies from businesses like yours before you commit.
BonusQR: the most configurable
BonusQR's distinguishing feature is a hybrid engine that lets you run several reward models simultaneously: a stamp card on one product line, points on overall spend, and cashback alongside. For an operator who wants to design an intricate programme, nothing else in this category offers the same flexibility.
Choose BonusQR over Loonine if you want to combine reward models, and you have the time both to design that scheme and to explain it to staff and customers. The trade-off is that complexity has to be communicated at a counter, every shift, by whoever is working.
Square Loyalty: if you already run Square
Square Loyalty is built into the Square point of sale and identifies customers by phone number at the till, accruing points automatically from the transaction value. If Square is already your till, this is the path of least resistance and there is little reason to add a separate system.
Choose Square Loyalty over Loonine if you already use Square and want loyalty tied directly to payment. Choose otherwise if you want a branded card that lives in the customer's wallet and can be messaged between visits, or if you operate outside Square's supported markets.
Loonine: the fastest enrolment
Loonine differs from every platform above in one specific way: staff enrol customers by typing a phone number, and the card arrives by text message in about 3 seconds. The customer does nothing: no phone, no camera, no scan. It also runs in English, French and Arabic (full right-to-left), and operates across the Gulf and Levant as well as the EU and United States.
Loonine is weaker than the alternatives on track record and review volume, because it is newer, and it deliberately does not offer gamification or hybrid reward models. If feature breadth is your priority rather than enrolment speed, one of the platforms above will suit you better.
How the options compare
| Platform | Enrolment method | Best for | Notable limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loopy Loyalty | QR scan | Longest track record | QR friction at busy counters |
| Stamp Me | QR scan, hardware | Feature breadth, hospitality | More configuration required |
| BonusQR | QR scan | Combining reward models | Complexity must be explained |
| Square Loyalty | Phone at the till | Existing Square users | Requires Square; no wallet card |
| Loonine | Staff types the number | Enrolment speed, multilingual, Gulf | Newer, fewer reviews |
What about free loyalty card apps?
Several platforms advertise a free tier, and it is worth reading what the free tier permits. Free plans in this category commonly cap customers at a low number, remove the messaging features, or, as with Loonine's own free plan, allow you to design a card but not enrol real customers. We state that plainly rather than burying it, because discovering it after setup is the most common complaint in this category.
If your budget is zero, a paper punch card is not a ridiculous answer for a very small business. The argument for paying starts at the point where you want to know who your repeat customers are and reach them when they stop coming, which paper cannot do at any price.
How much do digital loyalty platforms cost?
Wallet-based loyalty platforms for a single location generally cost between €20 and €90 per month, and the price is usually driven by customer count and messaging volume rather than by features. Below that range you are normally looking at a limited free tier; above it you are into enterprise or multi-site pricing.
The number that matters is cost per active loyalty customer per month. A €50 plan covering 1,000 customers is cheap; the same €50 covering 80 customers is not. Work out your realistic enrolled count after six months, usually a substantial share of your regulars, not your total footfall, and divide.
Watch for three charges that are easy to miss when comparing: per-message fees for SMS or push campaigns, a cap on customers where the next tier is a large step up, and a setup or certificate fee. None of these are unreasonable, but they change the comparison.
Which platform works in my country?
Coverage is the constraint that eliminates most options fastest, and it is worth checking before you evaluate features. Apple Wallet and Google Wallet work almost everywhere, but the platform's ability to send an enrolment message to your customers' numbers does not.
Two specific gaps catch businesses out. Square Loyalty is only available in the markets where Square itself operates, which excludes most of the Middle East. And several platforms built for the US and UK cannot reliably deliver SMS to Gulf numbers, which makes text-based enrolment impossible there regardless of what the feature list says.
Loonine operates across 35 countries including the GCC, Jordan and Lebanon alongside the EU, the UK and the United States. If your market is not on a platform's list, no amount of feature parity compensates.
How do I test a platform in one week?
Evaluate on enrolment, not on the dashboard, because the dashboard is what the vendor demonstrates and enrolment is what determines whether the programme works. A one-week test with real customers tells you more than any amount of feature comparison.
- Set up the card on the free trial and enrol yourself first. Time it with a stopwatch.
- Have your least technical staff member enrol a customer without your help. If they need help, so will everyone.
- Run it during your busiest hour, not a quiet afternoon. The rush is the real test.
- Count offers and joins for five days. Offers made divided by joins completed is your enrolment rate.
- Send one message to the customers you enrolled and see whether it arrives and how it looks.
- Then compare platforms on that number, not on the feature grid.
An enrolment rate above 60 per cent means the flow is working. Between 30 and 60 per cent, something in the ask is costing you customers. Below 30 per cent, the mechanism is wrong for your counter and a different enrolment method will beat any feature improvement.
What should I ask before signing up?
- If I leave, can I get my customer list, and in what format?
- Who owns the customer data, me or the platform, and is it ever used for anything else?
- Is the card certificate issued in my business's name or the platform's?
- What happens to my customers' cards if I cancel?
- Is there a per-message charge, and what is it?
- What is the actual limit on the plan I am buying: customers, locations, staff accounts?
- How do I record consent at enrolment, and can I produce it if a regulator asks?
The data ownership question is the one to insist on. A loyalty platform's real product is your customer list, and a platform that makes leaving difficult has told you how it intends to keep you.
What do businesses get wrong when choosing?
The most common mistake is choosing on feature count. Loyalty platforms in this category all do the core job, a card in the wallet that accumulates progress, and the differences that look large in a comparison table rarely change outcomes. Enrolment friction, country coverage and whether staff will use it every shift are what decide the result.
The second mistake is designing a complicated programme at launch. Tiers, multiple reward types and point multipliers all have to be explained at a counter by a part-time staff member to a customer in a hurry. Start with one mechanic, one reward, one sentence.
The third is not checking the free tier's limits before building on it. In this category free plans commonly permit card design but not real enrolment, Loonine's own free plan included, and finding that out after you have trained staff is avoidable.
How this comparison is maintained
Every competitor claim on this page is checked against that company's own public documentation and pricing page, and each carries a verification date on the detailed comparison pages. Features change; a comparison written once and left alone becomes misinformation within a year.
Check the current details on each vendor's own site before deciding. If you find something here that has gone out of date or is simply wrong, tell Loonine and it will be corrected: an inaccurate comparison damages the reader and, eventually, the publisher.