Glossary
What is digital loyalty card?
A digital loyalty card is a loyalty card held on a customer's phone rather than on paper, most commonly as a card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, which records progress towards a reward and updates itself when the business adds to it.
The term covers three quite different things in practice, and the difference decides whether a programme works. A wallet card needs no app and installs in one tap. A card inside a business's own branded app needs an install, which removes most potential members. A card inside a third-party loyalty app puts another company between the business and its customers. For an independent business the wallet card is almost always the right form, because the format's weakest point (getting the card onto the phone at all) is still stronger than the alternatives' weakest points.
Is a digital loyalty card the same as a wallet card?
Not quite: a wallet card is one kind of digital loyalty card, and the one that needs no app. The broader term also covers cards inside branded apps and inside third-party loyalty apps, which behave very differently at the counter.
The distinction is worth insisting on when comparing vendors, because all three are marketed with the same phrase. Ask specifically where the card lives, and whether the customer has to install anything to hold it.
Do digital loyalty cards work better than paper?
On the two measures that decide a programme's fate, yes. A paper card is lost often enough that progress resets regularly, and it cannot tell the business who its regulars are: a digital card survives a lost phone and produces a customer record.
Paper retains one real advantage: it costs nothing and needs no explanation. That is why it persists, and why the replacement has to be at least as fast at the counter to be worth adopting.
What does a digital loyalty card cost a small business?
Wallet loyalty platforms generally run between €20 and €90 a month, with no hardware to buy: the customer's phone is the card and the staff phone or till is the terminal. The other real cost is the reward itself, which for a free tenth coffee is usually under two per cent of what that customer spent to earn it.
See also
- Wallet card: A wallet card is a digital card stored in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet (the same place people keep boarding passes, event tickets and payment cards) that can update itself remotely after it has been issued.
- No-app loyalty: No-app loyalty is any loyalty programme that does not require the customer to install software, typically by delivering the card to the phone's built-in wallet instead.
- Stamp card: A stamp card is a loyalty mechanic that rewards a fixed number of visits, one stamp per visit (buy ten coffees, get the eleventh free), and is the digital successor to the paper punch card.
- Apple Wallet: Apple Wallet is the app pre-installed on every iPhone that stores payment cards, boarding passes, tickets and loyalty cards, and it can display and update loyalty cards without any additional app.
Further reading
How to add a loyalty card to Apple Wallet
A step-by-step guide for customers and business owners on getting a loyalty card into Apple Wallet, and what to do when the Add button does not appear.
How to add a loyalty card to Google Wallet
How customers add a loyalty card to Google Wallet on Android, what to do when the Add button does not work, and what a business needs in order to issue the cards.