Stamp cards or points — which suits a local business?
Points programs are what large retailers run, so they look like the serious option. For a shop with one location and a few hundred regulars they are usually the wrong tool, and the reason comes down to what each system is actually measuring.
Start your free trial →Stamps measure visits, points measure spend
If your problem is that customers come less often than they could, stamps address it directly — every visit is a visible step towards something. Points reward the size of the basket instead, which for a café or a barbershop is close to fixed and not the number you were trying to move.
Stamps are legible at a glance
A customer knows what "three more coffees" means without doing arithmetic. Points require a conversion rate, and any scheme whose value the customer cannot state in one sentence tends to be ignored — which is why so many points cards sit unused in wallets.
Points are worth it when baskets vary a lot
If one customer spends five euros and another spends two hundred, treating both visits identically is genuinely unfair and stamps will feel arbitrary. That is the case where points earn their extra complexity — and it is rare in a business where everyone buys roughly the same thing.
What each system is actually optimising
This is the whole decision, and it gets skipped surprisingly often.
- A points program optimises for spend per transaction. It says: the more you spend, the more you get back.
- A stamp card optimises for frequency. It says: the more often you come, the more you get back.
So the right question is not which is more sophisticated. It is which number you are trying to move.
For most local businesses, the basket is close to fixed. A haircut is a haircut. A flat white is a flat white. You cannot meaningfully persuade someone to buy two haircuts, so a system that rewards bigger baskets is optimising a variable you do not control. Frequency, on the other hand, is exactly the thing that separates a good month from a bad one.
The legibility problem
Points schemes almost always require a conversion: spend one euro, earn ten points; five hundred points is a free coffee. That is two pieces of arithmetic between the customer and the reward, and most people will not do either. The result is a scheme that is technically generous and practically invisible.
“Three more and the next one is free” needs no explanation, survives being relayed by a member of staff who started last week, and can be understood by a customer glancing at their phone for one second.
When points genuinely win
Be honest about this. Points are the better answer when:
- Baskets vary by an order of magnitude between customers.
- You sell many distinct products at very different margins.
- You have the volume to analyse the scheme and adjust it.
That describes a supermarket, an airline, or a large multi-site retailer. It rarely describes a single café, salon or studio.
A middle path
If your prices vary but your services do not, run a card per service rather than a single card per shop. Each card then covers a similar price band, which restores the fairness that points were solving for — without asking anyone to learn a conversion rate.
The questions everyone asks
Can I run a stamp card if my prices vary a lot?
You can, by running a card per service so each one covers a similar price band, which is what nail salons and groomers usually do. If the spread within a single service is still very wide, that is the signal that points might genuinely suit you better.
Do points make customers spend more per visit?
Sometimes, at the margin, in businesses where the basket is genuinely discretionary. In most local trades people buy what they came for, so the extra spend is small and rarely covers the added complexity of explaining a conversion rate to every new member of staff.
Which is easier for staff to run?
Stamps, by a wide margin. A stamp is a single yes-or-no action with no calculation, so there is nothing for a new starter to get wrong. Points require knowing the earn rate, the redemption rate and the exceptions, all of which decay the moment the person who set it up is off shift.
What about tiers — bronze, silver, gold?
Tiers work when you have enough customers for the top tier to feel exclusive and enough data to set the thresholds sensibly. With a few hundred regulars you usually have neither, and the effort goes into administering a hierarchy rather than into getting people through the door.
$29/month · 7-day free trial
Unlimited stamps · Unlimited customers · No per-scan fees
Start your free trial →