How do stamp cards work for my customers?

A customer buys a qualifying item, a stamp lands on their card automatically, and when the card fills they get the free one. Nobody has to remember a paper card, and your staff don't do anything at all.

How a customer redeems. They open their stamp cards and slide to redeem, standing in front of whoever is serving them. There's no app for your staff to open, no code to scan, and no prompt on your phone — during a rush, that's the difference between this working and being abandoned.

They'll show you a confirmation with your shop's name, the time, and a word that changes every 30 seconds. The changing word is the point: a screenshot shows one word frozen, and you'll see the real one change while you're looking at it. It never expires, so a slow queue never costs anyone their reward.

Where to look

Connect → Loyalty stamps in the app — set the card up, choose which items earn a stamp, and see how it's going.
Portal → Loyalty — the same thing on a bigger screen, with three tabs: The program, Members and Send a nudge. The numbers in both places are the same numbers.

Changing it once it's running

Open The program and edit it. Changing the reward wording or the qualifying items takes effect on the next sale; nobody loses stamps they've already earned, and a card halfway to a free coffee is still halfway there.

Pausing stops new stamps without deleting anything. Existing cards keep their progress and rewards already earned can still be spent — it's for a fortnight's closure, not for winding the card up. The app and the portal both show Paused while it is.

If a payment to ReceiptWave fails, nothing changes for 14 days. If it's still outstanding after that, new stamps pause in the same way until the payment goes through — every card keeps its progress and rewards can still be spent — and the portal's Loyalty page says so. We email you before that happens. See What happens if I cancel my plan or a payment fails?

Nudging the people it would actually help

Portal → Loyalty → Send a nudge writes to one of four groups rather than to everyone:

So close — one or two stamps from the reward.
Stalled — stuck on their first stamp or two.
Reward waiting — earned it and hasn't spent it.
Everyone collecting — anyone with a card in progress.

You'll see the size of each group before you send, and the message goes out through the same messaging you already use, under the same monthly allowance. Only the people in that group see it — in the notification and in their Messages tab.

What it's costing you

The program page shows what the rewards you've given away are worth against the visits they earned. It's the number to argue with if the card isn't paying for itself — usually the fix is the reward being too far away, not the reward being too generous.

Tips

Three coffees on one receipt earn three stamps, up to the per-visit limit you set. That limit stops a wholesale order emptying a card in one go.
Refunded sales lose their stamps. If a purchase is refunded in Square, the stamps it earned stop counting. That happens automatically while you're connected to Square; for a refund made while you were disconnected, take the stamp back by hand (below).
A customer who hasn't installed the app is still earning. Their stamps sit on their receipts and land on a card the moment they sign in — which is the main reason people install it.
Spare stamps roll over. If a card fills at ten and they bought twelve stamps' worth on that visit, the extra two start their next card. Nobody loses stamps for buying more on the visit that finished their card.

Giving or removing a stamp by hand

Sometimes the till was down, or a regular deserves one. On Members, set their count and give a reason — the reason is required, and it's the only record of why a balance changed. There are three, and no free-text box:

The till missed it — a sale went through but no stamp arrived.
A sale was refunded — take the stamp back.
A goodwill stamp — making something right for a customer.

It's stored in your activity log with who did it, and it appears under Reports → Activity. The customer sees the correction in their app, so nothing changes behind their back.

"I didn't get it"

If a customer redeems and something goes wrong, they can put the reward back themselves, once, for an hour. Nobody needs to approve it. It's recorded in your activity log, so you'll see it if it becomes a pattern — but a customer being told "sorry, it's gone" is the moment they stop trusting the card, and that costs more than the coffee.

Did this answer your question? Still stuck? Contact us