How to Choose Customer Loyalty Software When Customers Pay by Card
A buyer's guide to customer loyalty software and solutions for UK retailers whose customers pay by card: three models, six criteria, vendor questions.
What does customer loyalty software do?
Customer loyalty software recognises returning customers, records what they buy and rewards them for coming back. The point is simple: turn an anonymous transaction into a known customer you can bring back more often.
Strip away the marketing and every product in this category does five jobs:
- Enrolment. Getting a customer into the scheme, whether that's an app sign-up, a QR scan, a phone number at payment or automatic recognition of the card they tap.
- Recognition at payment. Matching this purchase to that customer, at the moment money moves.
- Rewards and offers. Points, stamps, spend thresholds, targeted discounts.
- Customer data and reporting. Visit frequency, basket value, lapse rates, store-level performance.
- Campaigns. Reaching lapsed or high-value customers with something relevant.
The difference between in-store and e-commerce is recognition. Online, the customer is already logged in, so identity comes free with the order. In store, the customer walks up, pays and leaves within moments. Unless something identifies them in that window, the sale is anonymous and nothing else in the list works.
That single constraint drives most of the decisions in this retail loyalty software buying guide. Evaluate the recognition step first. If a product cannot identify a reasonable share of your in-store customers at payment, its reporting, campaigns and rewards engine have nothing to work on.
App-based, card-linked and loyalty on card machines compared
The three main models differ in two places: how a customer joins, and how they are recognised when they pay. Everything else, the rewards logic, the reporting, the campaigns, sits downstream of those two steps.
| Model | How customers join | How they are recognised at payment | What the store needs | Where it suits best |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Branded or third-party loyalty app | Download the app, create an account, consent in the app | Customer opens the app and shows a QR code or barcode to be scanned | An app build, app store upkeep, scanners or an EPOS integration, staff prompting at payment | Brands with high online ordering, strong app engagement and a reason for customers to open the app anyway |
| Card-linked loyalty through a bank or card scheme programme | Customer registers a card inside their banking app or a third-party rewards programme | The scheme matches the transaction to the registered card after it settles | Participation in the programme and the merchant data to match against | Acquisition campaigns and reaching customers who are not yours yet |
| Loyalty on payment terminals through the payment provider | Customer opts in on the terminal screen at payment, with no app download | The payment token for their card is recognised next time they pay | Software enabled on the existing payment terminals through the payment provider | Multi-site retail and hospitality where most customers pay by card and will not download anything |
Alternatives are worth naming plainly. Talon.One describes itself as incentives technology with a promotion engine and developer tooling, and suits brands with developer teams running complex promotions and loyalty across digital channels. White Label Loyalty offers customisable enterprise loyalty programmes, including mobile apps, and suits brands that want an owned, branded experience and will invest in driving downloads. Thanx builds guest engagement software for restaurants, and suits restaurant groups in the markets where it operates. None of these is wrong; they answer different questions.
Where most of your in-store spend arrives by card, the model that requires no download will usually enrol a larger share of those customers, because the only thing standing between the customer and the scheme is a screen prompt they are already looking at. We make the longer case in app-free loyalty for card-present customer data.
How to choose customer loyalty software: six criteria
Judge each option on three things above all: how easily customers join, how well it fits the EPOS and payment terminals you already run, and who owns the resulting data. Price matters, but a cheap scheme nobody joins costs more than an expensive one that works.
Work through these six criteria in order.
Enrolment friction. Count the actions a customer must take to join. An app download, account creation and email verification is three barriers before a single visit is recorded. A QR scan is one barrier but requires the customer to have a phone out and unlocked. A phone number at payment is one barrier plus staff time. Card recognition at the terminal is a single prompt. For a queue at lunchtime, that difference decides your enrolment rate. Joining is only half the job; why shoppers join but don't return covers the other half.
Fit with your EPOS and payment provider. Ask whether the software runs on the payment terminals you already have, through your existing acquirer, or whether it needs new hardware, an EPOS upgrade or a middleware layer. Loyalty software with payment terminal integration should deploy remotely through your payment provider rather than requiring an engineer visit to every site. Confirm which terminal models in your estate are supported today.
Data ownership and export. Establish in writing who owns the customer records, transaction history and consent records. Then establish how you get them out. A scheduled export into your CRM or CDP, with documented fields, is the minimum. If the vendor can only show you data inside their own dashboard, you are renting your customer file. Card tokens can act as the link between in-store sales and the customer data you already hold, as the payment terminal as a join key explains.
UK GDPR, consent and privacy notices. Check how consent is captured, what wording appears at the point of enrolment, how a customer withdraws consent and where the privacy notice lives. Ask what lawful basis the vendor relies on for each processing activity, and whether they act as processor or controller.
Multi-site management. One scheme should run across the whole estate with central reporting and store-level rules where you need them: a launch offer at three new sites, different reward thresholds by format, a regional campaign. Confirm you can compare store performance in one view rather than exporting ten reports. Running a loyalty programme across multiple locations is where most schemes quietly break.
Total cost per store. Build the number properly: subscription, hardware, installation, integration work, app build and maintenance if relevant, staff training time, and the cost of the rewards themselves. Compare that figure against the incremental visits the scheme needs to generate to pay for itself.
What questions should you ask a loyalty software vendor?
Ask questions that expose three things: how customers actually join, which payment terminals and providers are supported today, and what happens to your data. Vendors answer vague questions vaguely, so make each one specific enough that the answer is either yes or no.
Take these eight into every demo.
- Which payment providers and payment terminals do you support today, in the UK, in production?
- Does a customer need to download an app to join and earn?
- How is a returning customer recognised when they pay by card?
- Who owns the customer data, and can we export it in full to our CRM?
- How do you capture and store consent under UK GDPR, and what wording does the customer see?
- How long does a rollout across our estate take, and does it need site visits?
- What does a member of staff have to do or say at the payment terminal?
- What is the all-in cost per store per month, including rewards funding?
Press on the first two. "Supported" sometimes means "on the roadmap" or "certified with one acquirer in one market". Ask for the name of a live deployment on your terminal family and your provider.
Then pilot before you commit. Pick two or three stores that represent your estate properly: one high-volume, one quieter, one with a different format or demographic. Run it for a full trading cycle, measure enrolment rate per thousand transactions and repeat visit rate, and only then sign for the rest.
How much does customer loyalty software cost?
Cost depends on the model you pick, the number of stores you run and whether you need new hardware or an app built. Two schemes with the same headline subscription can differ widely once rollout is included.
Build your estimate from these components:
- Subscription, charged per store, per location or per terminal
- App build and ongoing app store maintenance, if the model requires an app
- Hardware: scanners, tablets or replacement payment terminals
- Integration work with your EPOS, CRM or data warehouse
- Rewards funding, the discount or points value you actually give away
- Staff time: training, prompting customers, dealing with queries at payment
Loyalty on card machines removes two of those lines. There is no app to build and no extra hardware to buy, because the software is enabled on the payment terminals the store already uses, through the payment provider that already manages them.
Where loyalty on card machines fits
This model suits stores where most customers pay by card and will not download another app. The scheme runs on the payment terminals already in your sites, recognises a returning customer by their payment token when they pay, and is enabled through your payment provider rather than through new hardware.
Zeal is an award-winning value-added services provider for payment terminals. In the UK, Zeal is live with Adyen, DNA Payments, Elavon, Lloyds Cardnet, NMI, Viva Wallet and Worldpay. Merchants on other providers can register interest.
Be clear about where this model is the wrong answer. If a large share of your orders arrive through your own app or website, an app-based scheme keeps the customer in one place and gives you a richer channel for ordering, payment and rewards together. If you run complex, rules-heavy digital promotions across several channels, a promotion engine with a developer team behind it will do things a terminal-resident scheme will not. If your brand strategy depends on owning an app experience, build the app.
Restaurant groups weighing these options against each other will find a fuller comparison in alternatives to Thanx and Punchh for UK restaurant groups.
What I have learned working with payment providers
Loyalty software for card payments succeeds or fails on distribution, not features. Zeal has been activated for more than 30,000 merchants across payment providers, and partners hold 4 million payment terminals in their signed activation pipeline. None of that came from selling separate hardware into stores one site at a time. It came from working through acquirers, payment providers and ISOs, so the software arrives on terminals that are already deployed and already managed by the payment provider.
In my experience, the schemes that stall are the ones that ask a customer to do something extra before their first reward. In my experience, operations leads ask how much rollout work a scheme needs long before they ask about its features.
That route matters to an operations lead for one reason: it removes the rollout. There is no engineer visit, no new device to install, no parallel estate to maintain.
Zeal won Team of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards 2026, and Zeal won Platinum in the Fintech category of the Juniper Research Future Digital Awards 2023.
Frequently asked questions
Do customers need an app to join a loyalty scheme?
No. With card-linked loyalty or loyalty on card machines, the customer joins at the payment terminal or through a programme they already use, with no app download. App-based schemes do require a download, which adds a step before a customer can join in store.
What is the best customer loyalty software?
There is no single answer, because the right choice depends on how your customers pay and how willing they are to join. Run every shortlisted product through the six criteria above: enrolment friction, fit with your EPOS and payment provider, data ownership, UK GDPR handling, multi-site management and total cost per store. The product that scores best on enrolment for your specific customer base is usually the right one.
Can one loyalty scheme run across all our stores?
Yes, provided the software manages multiple locations centrally. Check that you get one customer record across the estate, central reporting, and the ability to set store-level or region-level rules without running separate schemes.
Is recognising customers by their payment card allowed under UK GDPR?
It depends on the lawful basis and the consent you capture. Ask any vendor to set out in writing what data they process, which lawful basis applies, whether they act as processor or controller, and what the customer sees at enrolment. Check the position with your data protection officer and against current ICO guidance.
How do I get started?
Speak to your payment provider about what value-added services are available on your current estate. To discuss adding loyalty to the terminals you already run, book a partner walkthrough.
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