Create a digital loyalty card: Explained in 3 steps
Every week without a digital loyalty card you lose regular customers – without noticing. Set up in 5 minutes, free up to 100 customers.
A digital loyalty card lives in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet on your customers' smartphones. It collects stamps or points and shows the reward. The special thing: it can do something no plastic card can – it reaches out to the customer. This post shows what a digital loyalty card can do, what it costs and how to set it up in three steps.
What a digital loyalty card can do
The core is the same as any loyalty card: customer buys, gets a stamp, after a certain number they get a reward. The difference is in everything around it.
Always with them. The card lives in Wallet (the pre-installed app for digital cards on every smartphone). Your customer has their phone with them on every purchase. Forgotten card is no longer a problem.
Messages on the lock screen. You can send a push notification that appears as a Wallet notification. A promotion, a reminder about the last missing stamp, an offer just for today.
Automatic reminders. If someone hasn't been in for three weeks, they get a message. If it's their birthday, they get an offer. This runs without you doing anything.
Live numbers. You see in the dashboard how many customers are active, how many stamps were given out and how many rewards were redeemed.
Fraud protection. Stamps only come from scans by your team. Scan cooldowns (waiting times between stamps) prevent someone from getting five stamps in five minutes.
What it doesn't need: an app. Apple Wallet and Google Wallet come pre-installed on every smartphone. For more on what a Wallet pass is, see the post What is a Wallet pass.
Take the self-test: Is a digital loyalty card right for you?
- Do you have regular customers who come back often?
- Do you want to reach customers without relying on email or social media?
- Do you want to know how many customers are active and how often they come?
- Are you looking for a solution that works without new hardware?
- Is it important to you that customers can't forget the card?
If you answer yes to three or more questions, a digital loyalty card is worth it for your shop.
Digital loyalty card vs. plastic and paper
The question almost every shop owner asks: is it worth switching? The table shows the differences in everyday use.
| Criterion | Plastic card | Paper card | Digital loyalty card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per card | Printing and shipping | Printing costs | No per-unit costs |
| Hardware in shop | Reader or till system | Rubber stamp | Existing smartphone |
| Card forgotten | Often | Often | Rarely |
| Card lost | Reissue, record gone | Record gone | Rescan |
| Reach customers | Only with email address | No | Push to lock screen |
| Reporting | Depends on system | None | Live dashboard |
| Setup | Weeks | Days | Minutes |
Plastic cards have one advantage: they feel valuable and work well in chains with their own till systems. For a single shop they're usually too expensive and too much hassle. Details are in the comparison Plastic loyalty card vs. Wallet card.
What does a digital loyalty card cost?
Costs depend on the provider and the number of your active customers. With stampa, the start is free: €0 up to 100 active customers, no credit card needed. Above that, plans start at €29 per month for up to 250 active customers, cancel monthly.
An example for a café with 200 active customers: €29 per month, that's about 15 cents per customer per month. If just one in ten customers buys an extra coffee for €3.20 because of a reminder, that's €64 in extra revenue. More than double the plan cost.
Whether that works for you, you'll see in the dashboard. stampa measures the effect with a random control group (some customers don't get reminders) and tells you honestly if the numbers aren't reliable yet.
Data protection: what you need to know
A digital loyalty card processes personal data, at minimum a name and stamp count. Three things matter:
Consent for the card itself. The customer agrees to the privacy policy when creating the card.
Separate consent for marketing. Push messages with promotions are marketing. This needs a separate checkbox that must not be pre-checked.
An accessible privacy policy. Even without your own website.
stampa handles this for you: an editable privacy policy is automatically created and hosted for every shop. Marketing consent is a separate checkbox and off by default. More on this under GDPR and loyalty programs.
Set up a digital loyalty card in three steps
Setup is where many shops hesitate because they expect it to be complicated. In practice it's three steps that take under an hour together.
Step 1: Create the card
You sign up, enter your shop name and website. Onboarding pulls your logo and colors automatically. You choose the stamp count and reward, for example 10 stamps, 1 free coffee. Your branding (logo, colors) appears on the card, poster and public page in every plan.
Step 2: Print the poster
AI creates a print-ready poster with QR code. You print it and put it at the register. That's the only physical thing you need.
Step 3: Brief your team
Everyone on your team opens the scanner on their own smartphone. Customer shows card, employee scans, stamp is added. Full card? Redeem reward, one tap in the dashboard. The briefing typically takes under 15 minutes.
After that the rest runs itself: the first customer scans the QR code, the card lands in Wallet. From that moment on it collects stamps and receives your messages.
How it works in practice
A bakery in Munich created the card on a Monday. Tuesday the poster was at the register. Wednesday the team had a three-minute briefing. By Thursday 12 customers were signed up. After two weeks it was 87. The owner says: I thought this would take weeks. It was 40 minutes.
A tip for getting started
Walk through it yourself first. Scan your QR code, add the card to your phone and have your team give you a stamp. If that works, it works with customers.
And say a sentence when they pay, something like: Want our loyalty card? Just scan. This sentence brings more cards into Wallet than any poster alone.
What happens if you don't change anything
Without a digital loyalty card you lose regular customers every week without noticing. They come less often because they forget you exist. You can't reach them except if they happen to be in front of you. You don't know how many customers you have or how often they come. And you're competing with shops that remind their customers by push.
A digital loyalty card changes that. It keeps contact even when the customer isn't in the shop. It reminds them before they go to a competitor. And it shows you whether your promotions work.
Conclusion
A digital loyalty card turns a silent piece of plastic into a channel to your regular customers. Always with them, reachable by push, automatically reminded, live tracked. It needs no app, no hardware and no weeks of preparation. For small shops it's the most practical form of loyalty card.
With stampa you create your digital loyalty card in minutes. Free up to 100 active customers, no credit card needed. Start free now.