Alternatives to Thanx and Punchh for UK restaurant groups: how to choose

Most guests who walk into a UK restaurant group this week will pay by card, leave no identifiable trace and never appear in the CRM. Debit cards alone accounted for 54% of all UK payments in 2025, while cash fell to 8%, according to UK Finance's UK Payment Markets 2026 summary.

That is the problem a head of marketing is usually trying to solve when they start looking past their current guest engagement product. Every extra step, whether a download, a sign-up or a code, narrows the audience to the guests who were already engaged. The rest stay anonymous, and estate data stays fragmented across sites and franchisees.

This guide sets out the realistic options for a UK multi-site or franchise group: app-led guest engagement, ordering-led loyalty, and recognition on the payment terminal itself. Each is described by what it is built around and when it suits you, so a shortlist can be defended to finance and operations.

What are the alternatives to Thanx and Punchh for UK restaurant groups?

The alternatives fall into three models: ordering-led loyalty built around direct ordering and kiosks (Slerp, Vita Mojo), an all-in-one hospitality app and ordering product (Pepper), and loyalty on the payment terminal with no app download (Zeal). The right one depends on where your guests pay.

On its own site, Thanx describes software for restaurants covering loyalty, individualised guest outreach and insight-led marketing. Punchh, now part of PAR Engagement, describes connecting marketing, ordering, loyalty and data in one place for restaurant operators. Both are built around guests who identify themselves digitally.

That leads to the framing question for any restaurant loyalty software. How many of your guests will ever download or open an app? And what happens to everyone else, the people who order, tap a card and leave?

If the answer is "most of them, and we lose them", the shortlist needs at least one option that works at the payment terminal rather than in an app store.

Restaurant loyalty options at a glance

Three models cover the credible choices for a UK group: app-led guest engagement, ordering-led loyalty attached to a direct ordering channel, and recognition at the payment terminal. The table summarises each from what the companies publish about themselves, with a plain note on when it suits you.

When an app-led product such as Thanx, Punchh or Pepper suits you

App-led loyalty suits brands with frequent, digitally engaged guests and the marketing budget to drive downloads. It is the right model when the app is a genuine destination for the guest.

Thanx, Punchh and Pepper all give you something terminal recognition alone does not: a branded surface in the guest's pocket. Push notifications, order-ahead, stored preferences and tiers all live there. If your category supports daily or near-daily visits, such as a coffee chain or a fast-casual brand with a loyal lunchtime base, the download is a reasonable ask.

The trade-off is reach. An app-based scheme reaches the guests who download and keep using the app, which is a subset of your footfall. The cost of acquiring each app user also recurs with every new cohort, so it belongs in the business case.

Choose app-led when the app earns its place. Do not choose it to solve anonymous in-store spend, because that is not what it is built for.

When an ordering-led option such as Slerp or Vita Mojo suits you

Ordering-led loyalty suits groups whose growth is in direct online ordering, click-and-collect, delivery or kiosks. Rewards attach to an ordering account the guest already needs, so there is no separate sign-up to drive.

Slerp describes itself as an online ordering system that helps restaurants take direct orders rather than relying only on third-party marketplaces. Vita Mojo describes one system for menus, channels, kitchens and guest data, aimed at multi-site QSR brands.

The commercial logic is clear. If a meaningful share of revenue is moving to digital orders, every order already carries an identity, a basket and a frequency signal. Attaching rewards to that flow adds little adoption friction and supports moving volume off marketplaces.

The trade-off mirrors app-led products. Guests who walk in and tap a card sit outside the ordering channel, so they sit outside the programme. For a kiosk-heavy QSR that gap may be small. For a coffee group where most transactions are a walk-in order and a contactless tap, it can be most of the business.

Looking for alternatives to Slerp, Pepper and Vita Mojo usually means one of two things: direct ordering has plateaued, or the group has realised the in-store estate is the larger unmeasured pool.

When loyalty on the payment terminal suits you

Loyalty on the payment terminal suits groups where most guests walk in and pay by card. Recognition happens on the card machines the restaurant already uses, with no app download and no extra step for the guest.

In plain terms, the Zeal SDK runs on the payment terminal as a value-added services layer. When a guest pays by card, passive card-token recognition identifies a returning payment token. Offers and rewards appear on the terminal screen at the moment of payment, and the group sees visit and spend data for every site in the Merchant Dashboard. This is restaurant loyalty software without an app in the literal sense: the guest does nothing they were not already doing.

Zeal is hardware-agnostic and acquirer-agnostic. Live UK payment partners are Adyen, DNA Payments, Elavon, Lloyds Cardnet, NMI, Viva Wallet and Worldpay; groups on other providers can register interest. The first practical question is which payment provider and terminals each site and franchisee runs.

The trade-off: on its own it does not give you a branded consumer app, and it does not cover online or delivery orders that never touch a payment terminal. Coverage depends on each site's payment provider, which in a franchise estate is rarely uniform. For the mechanics in more detail, see how to add loyalty to an EPOS without a customer app.

It can sit alongside an existing app or ordering product rather than replacing it. Zeal also builds white-label apps for groups that want their own app as well as recognition on their card machines.

How do you evaluate restaurant loyalty software for a UK estate?

Score each option on reach, data, fit with your EPOS and payment providers, and the cost of guest adoption. A multi-site restaurant loyalty decision that skips any one of those tends to be reopened.

Use this checklist when you build the shortlist.

• Share of guests the scheme can reach without an app. Compare current app monthly active users with total card transactions. The gap is your unaddressed audience.
• Card-present data captured per site. Ask whether the option records in-store visits and spend for guests who never sign up, or only for enrolled users.
• EPOS and payment provider compatibility across every site and franchisee. Map it site by site before you shortlist. Mixed estates with several payment providers and EPOS vendors are where rollouts slow down.
• UK GDPR, consent and data processing terms. Confirm the lawful basis for each processing activity, how consent is captured, and what the data processing agreement says about sub-processors and retention. The ICO's UK GDPR guidance and resources is the reference point.
• Time to roll out per site. Ask whether deployment is a remote terminal update, an EPOS integration project or a per-site visit. Across a large estate the difference is measured in months.
• Who owns the guest data. Check contractual ownership and export rights, not just dashboard access, and what happens at the end of the term.

Then add a commercial test: what does it cost to identify each guest? App-led schemes carry a download acquisition cost that recurs. Terminal recognition shifts that cost to deployment. Neither is cheaper in every case, but the shapes differ enough to change a business case. For a deeper look at the two models, read how loyalty apps and card-linked loyalty compare on repeat visits for enterprise retail.

Can you run more than one loyalty model at once?

Yes. Many groups keep an app or ordering product for digital guests and add terminal recognition for walk-in card payers, because the two groups overlap less than expected.

The data joins up through the payment token. A guest who orders ahead in the app and a guest who taps a card in store are the same person if the same card sits behind both, so the token works as a common key. Where a guest consents to sign up at the payment terminal, that record can be matched to the existing CRM profile rather than creating a duplicate.

Running both has a cost: two sets of rules, two reporting views and a reconciliation job someone must own. The payoff is that in-store spend stops being invisible. See how this works for hospitality on our loyalty for restaurants page.

Start with the channel that holds the most unmeasured revenue. For most UK multi-site groups, that is in store.

What we have learned putting loyalty on card machines

Zeal has activated 30,000+ merchants across payment providers, and our partners have 4 million payment terminals in their signed activation pipeline. Zeal won Platinum in the Fintech category of the Juniper Research Future Digital Awards 2023, and Team of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards 2026.

In my experience, the hardest part of enterprise restaurant loyalty is not the reward mechanic, it is the estate: several payment providers, several EPOS vendors and many franchisees, with no single integration that covers every site. That is why hardware-agnostic and acquirer-agnostic deployment matters more than any single feature on a comparison grid.

In my experience, groups underestimate how much of their revenue is anonymous until they see visit frequency for card payers who never joined anything. That view is usually the strongest argument for changing approach.

None of this makes app-led or ordering-led products wrong. It makes them incomplete for groups whose business happens in store.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main difference between Thanx and Punchh?

Both serve restaurant brands. From their own public positioning, Thanx emphasises loyalty, individualised guest outreach and insight-led marketing, while Punchh, now part of PAR Engagement, emphasises bringing marketing, ordering, loyalty and data together for restaurant operators.

Do restaurant guests need an app for loyalty?

No. Recognition on the payment terminal and card-linked schemes identify returning guests when they pay, so the guest pays by card as usual with no app download.

Does loyalty on the payment terminal work with my EPOS?

Yes. The Zeal SDK runs on the payment terminal, not the EPOS, so it works alongside whatever EPOS each site uses. The check that matters is whether each site's payment provider is live with Zeal.

Which UK payment providers support Zeal today?

Adyen, DNA Payments, Elavon, Lloyds Cardnet, NMI, Viva Wallet and Worldpay. Groups on other providers can register interest.

Is card-token recognition GDPR compliant?

It can be, and compliance depends on implementation. Recognition uses a pseudonymous payment token rather than card details, and enrolment into marketing needs consent with a clear lawful basis, retention period and data processing terms. Review your privacy notice and processing records against ICO guidance before launch.

Talk to partnerships

If your gap is anonymous in-store card payments across a multi-site or franchise estate, your shortlist needs an option that works on the payment terminal. Zeal is an award-winning value-added services provider for payment terminals, deployed through payment partners on existing terminal estates and working alongside your EPOS, app or ordering product. Talk to partnerships to check coverage across your sites and payment providers.