Short answer. Every coffee shop loyalty scheme in the UK is one of three things, whether the provider calls it a program, a programme or a scheme. Digital stamp cards (Magic Stamp, Loopy Loyalty) digitise the paper card: cheap, simple, and the right answer for most single-site shops that want a visit nudge. Points and POS-bundled schemes (Square Loyalty, Loyalzoo, SQUID) reward spend automatically at the till and suit shops that want zero counter friction. Paid memberships (PerkClub) flip the model: customers pay a monthly fee for an ongoing perk, so revenue is booked before the visit, which suits shops whose priority is recurring revenue rather than discounts.
RWRD sits between categories, adding new-customer discovery on top of stamps, and Embargo bundles loyalty with CRM and email marketing for shops that want one supplier. Most coffee shops need exactly one of these, and the choice follows the problem: visit frequency points to stamps, checkout automation points to points, unpredictable cashflow points to a membership. This guide compares all seven with pricing verified in August 2026.
The three ways to run a coffee shop loyalty scheme
Digital stamp cards are the paper card without the paper. Buy nine drinks, get the tenth free, tracked on a pass in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. The customer commits nothing up front, the shop gives away roughly one drink in ten, and the mechanic's whole job is lifting visit frequency. It is the cheapest category and the easiest to launch.
Points and POS-bundled schemes attach rewards to the till. Points accrue automatically per pound spent, usually identified by phone number at checkout, so nobody stamps anything and staff do nothing extra. The trade-off is that the scheme is welded to your POS: leave the till provider and the scheme, and usually its data, goes with it.
Paid memberships are the Club Pret model at independent scale. The customer pays a fixed monthly fee, say £25 to £45, for an ongoing perk such as a daily coffee. This is the only mechanic of the three that changes when revenue arrives rather than how much of it you give away. It asks the most of the customer, so it converts a smaller share of them, but each one becomes booked monthly income. The full argument between the retroactive and the up-front models is in membership vs loyalty.
The rest of this guide works through the strongest providers in each category. It is worth saying up front: these categories are not rivals for the same job, and the cheapest option genuinely is the best option for a lot of shops.
At a glance: schemes and costs compared
| Approach | Example providers | Typical UK cost (Aug 2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital stamp card | Magic Stamp, Loopy Loyalty | Magic Stamp from £39/month per site; Loopy Loyalty from $25/month | Single-site shops wanting a simple, cheap visit nudge |
| Points on the till | Square Loyalty, SQUID | Square Loyalty £25–£65 per location/month by loyalty visits | Square-based shops wanting rewards with zero extra steps |
| Points + memberships | Loyalzoo | From £57 + VAT/month | Shops wanting points now with room to add subscriptions |
| Discovery app with stamps | RWRD | £25 or £40/month, plus £12.50 or £20 per additional site | New-customer reach, strongest in London |
| All-in-one loyalty + CRM | Embargo | Quote-based monthly subscription | Small groups wanting loyalty, CRM and email in one place |
| Paid membership | PerkClub | Flat monthly platform fee plus Stripe processing | Shops wanting recurring revenue rather than discounts |
Prices move; every figure here was checked against the provider's published pricing in August 2026, with sources listed at the end.
Digital stamp cards
Magic Stamp
What it is. A digital stamp card built around a physical Bluetooth stamper that customers tap their phone against. The card lives in a wallet pass, so there is no consumer app to install, and the stamper itself is a genuine asset: staff enjoy using it, which matters more for adoption than most feature lists.
Pricing. Per site, starting at £39 a month in the UK per Magic Stamp's published pricing. Third-party roundups from April 2026 list US tiers at $39 and $59 a month per site, with custom pricing beyond ten locations.
Who it suits. A single-site shop that wants to stop printing paper cards and start nudging visit frequency this week. Setup takes hours and staff training takes minutes. If that is the whole brief, Magic Stamp is arguably the best answer on this list, and cheaper than everything below it except Loopy Loyalty.
Honest watch-outs. It is a stamp card, so it rewards visits that already happened and books no revenue in advance. Shops that later decide cashflow is the real problem tend to add a membership rather than replace the stamps. The full trade-off is in PerkClub vs Magic Stamp.
Loopy Loyalty
What it is. One of the best-known wallet-pass stamp card platforms globally. Customers get a branded pass in Apple or Google Wallet; staff stamp it by scanning a QR code or via the Stamper App, and the reward unlocks at the threshold you set.
Pricing. In US dollars: Starter at $25 a month for one location, Growth at $69 for up to three, Ultimate at $95 for up to ten, each with roughly 20% off when billed annually. All tiers include unlimited customers and push messages.
Who it suits. The most price-sensitive route into digital stamps, and the pick if you don't want any hardware at all. For a shop whose entire requirement is "replace the paper card", Starter at $25 a month is hard to argue with.
Honest watch-outs. Pricing is in dollars, support is not UK-specific, and like every stamp card it is a promise of a future discount rather than committed revenue. See PerkClub vs Loopy Loyalty.
Points and POS-bundled schemes
Square Loyalty
What it is. Square's points add-on for businesses already on Square POS. Customers identify themselves at checkout, usually by phone number, and points accrue automatically on every sale, cash included. Rewards can be tied to visits, spend or specific items.
Pricing. UK pricing is per location per month, banded by activity: £25 for up to 500 loyalty visits, £45 for 501 to 1,500, £65 above that, with a 30-day free trial and no long-term contract.
Who it suits. Shops already running Square POS that want a competent points scheme with zero extra counter steps and reporting in the same dashboard as sales. For that shop it is the lowest-effort option on this list. Square users wanting a different flavour of loyalty can also look at SQUID, an Irish-founded spend-based loyalty app now live on the Square App Marketplace under an official partnership covering the UK and Ireland.
Honest watch-outs. It only exists inside Square: change POS and the scheme and its history go with it. The banded pricing also means a busy shop pays more precisely because the scheme is working. It is a retroactive discount mechanic, not a revenue tool. See PerkClub vs Square Loyalty.
Loyalzoo
What it is. A London-based loyalty platform that runs points or stamp schemes on the shop's existing till or a counter tablet, with marketing tools (email, SMS, push) built in. Unusually for this category, Loyalzoo also supports paid subscriptions and memberships with automated recurring payments.
Pricing. Grow at £57 + VAT a month, Smart at £127 + VAT with tiered loyalty and targeted promotions, custom pricing for multi-location, with a 7-day free trial.
Who it suits. A shop that wants points-style loyalty today but likes having a membership option in the same product for later, from a UK supplier with UK support. It is a sensible hedge if you are genuinely unsure which mechanic you will end up on.
Honest watch-outs. At £57 + VAT a month it costs more than either dedicated stamp app, and the membership features are one module among many rather than the centre of the product. A shop that already knows recurring revenue is the goal is better served by a membership-first platform. See PerkClub vs Loyalzoo.
Discovery apps with loyalty built in
RWRD
What it is. A consumer discovery app, strongest in London, where customers browse a map of independent coffee shops, collect stamps and unlock rewards. For the shop it doubles as a marketing channel: RWRD's audience finds you through the app.
Pricing. Kickstart at £25 a month plus £12.50 per additional site, Rocket at £40 a month plus £20 per additional site, with two months free on annual billing. Rocket adds unlimited email campaigns and push notifications and a dedicated marketing manager.
Who it suits. A shop whose problem is acquisition rather than retention: a newer venue in a dense urban market that needs people through the door for the first time. Nothing else on this list does that job, and £25 a month is a low price for a genuine acquisition channel.
Honest watch-outs. The customer relationship belongs to RWRD. They downloaded RWRD's app, they see your competitors on the same map, and the loyalty data accrues to the network. Outside London the venue density thins out quickly. See PerkClub vs RWRD.
All-in-one loyalty platforms
Embargo
What it is. A mature UK hospitality platform combining digital loyalty, a CRM, email marketing, order-ahead and gift cards, used by around 2,500 venues and backed by a $3.5m raise in 2025 to build out AI-driven CRM.
Pricing. Not published. Embargo sells a quote-based monthly subscription with no setup costs; expect the quote to reflect site count and modules.
Who it suits. Small groups of two to ten sites that want loyalty, customer database and marketing under one login from one supplier. If vendor consolidation is itself the goal, Embargo is the most credible all-in-one in UK independent hospitality.
Honest watch-outs. Unpublished pricing makes comparison shopping harder, and a single-site shop can end up on a plan shaped for a group. Loyalty here means points and stamps first; a subscription module exists but is not the centre of gravity. See PerkClub vs Embargo.
Paid memberships
PerkClub
What it is. Our own platform, so read this section knowing that, but the category it represents is the one genuinely different mechanic on this list. PerkClub gives a coffee shop a white-label paid membership: a monthly club under the shop's own name, billed through Stripe in pounds, redeemed via a wallet pass with daily redemption caps built in. No POS integration is required.
Pricing. A flat monthly platform fee plus standard Stripe processing on member billing; the fee does not scale with member count. Current figures are on the pricing page.
Who it suits. Shops whose real problem is cashflow rather than footfall. A stamp card gives away the tenth drink; a membership books, say, £35 per member on the first of the month before anyone orders. One hundred members at £35 is £3,500 of monthly recurring revenue, which is a different category of outcome from a discount scheme. The full case for the model is in why memberships beat loyalty schemes.
Honest watch-outs. A membership asks for real commitment, so it converts fewer customers than a free stamp card and it will not bring in new faces the way RWRD can. It monetises the relationship you already have. If you just want a light-touch thank-you for repeat visits, a stamp card is the better and cheaper tool, and plenty of shops run both. For a deeper comparison of membership platforms specifically, see our roundup of coffee shop subscription platforms.
How to choose
Name the problem first. "I want a loyalty scheme" is not a problem. Quiet weekday afternoons, no repeat visits, unpredictable revenue and no new customers are problems, and each maps to a different category above.
Single site, tight budget, want a nudge: pick a stamp card. Loopy Loyalty at $25 a month or Magic Stamp at £39 a month per site does the job with near-zero risk. This is the right answer for more shops than any provider's marketing will admit, ours included.
Already on Square: start with Square Loyalty. £25 a month inside a till you already run beats any integration project. Just go in knowing the scheme is tied to the POS.
Need new customers in London: RWRD. It is the only acquisition channel on this list, and it can sit alongside any of the others.
Two to ten sites wanting one supplier: Embargo. Get the quote and compare it honestly against assembling the pieces separately.
Cashflow is the problem: a paid membership. No stamp card or points scheme books revenue in advance; that is not a criticism of them, it is just not their job. If predictable monthly income is the goal, a membership is the mechanic that delivers it, and PerkClub is built for exactly that.
A note on gifting
One more thing worth knowing before you choose: platforms increasingly pair memberships with gifting, because a month of someone's coffees is an easy present to give and a natural way to win a brand-new customer. PerkClub's Gifts add-on lets your customers buy gift memberships priced in items over time, ten coffees say, rather than stored value. For how that compares with a plain voucher, see gift cards vs gift memberships.
Bottom line
There is no single best coffee shop loyalty scheme in the UK, but there is a best scheme for each problem. Stamps for visit frequency, on a budget: Magic Stamp or Loopy Loyalty. Points for automatic rewards at the till: Square Loyalty, or Loyalzoo for a UK supplier with a membership option in reserve. Discovery for new faces: RWRD. Consolidation for small groups: Embargo. And recurring revenue, the one job the discount mechanics cannot do: a paid membership. Choose the category before the provider, and if the membership route is the one that fits, the PerkClub team is happy to walk through the numbers for your shop.
Common questions
- Do coffee shop loyalty schemes work?
- Yes, when the mechanic matches the goal. 79% of daily coffee drinkers say a loyalty programme influences where they buy (National Coffee Association, 2025 NCDT), and 74% of restaurant leaders run one (Square, Future of Commerce 2025). But the three mechanics do different jobs: stamp cards lift visit frequency, points schemes lift spend per visit, and paid memberships book revenue in advance. A scheme 'fails' most often because it was the wrong mechanic for the goal, not because loyalty doesn't work.
- How much does a coffee shop loyalty app cost in the UK?
- As of August 2026: digital stamp cards run from $25/month (Loopy Loyalty) to £39/month per site (Magic Stamp). Square Loyalty costs £25 to £65 per location per month depending on loyalty visits. Loyalzoo starts at £57 + VAT/month. RWRD's plans are £25 or £40 per month plus per-site fees. Embargo is quote-based. Paid membership platforms like PerkClub charge a flat monthly platform fee plus Stripe processing on member billing. Always check current pricing before committing.
- What is better, a stamp card or a membership?
- They solve different problems. A stamp card is a promise of a future free drink: cheap to run, zero commitment from the customer, and good at nudging visit frequency. A membership charges the customer monthly for an ongoing perk, so revenue is booked before the visit. If your problem is quiet weekdays, start with a stamp card. If your problem is unpredictable cashflow, a membership is the only mechanic of the three that changes it.
- Do customers need to download an app for a loyalty scheme?
- Not for most modern schemes. Magic Stamp, Loopy Loyalty and PerkClub all use Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes, so there is nothing new to install. Square Loyalty identifies customers by phone number at checkout. RWRD is the exception by design: it is a consumer app, because the app itself is the discovery channel.
- Can a coffee shop run two loyalty schemes at once?
- Yes, and pairing across categories is common: a stamp card or points scheme for casual customers alongside a paid membership for committed ones. The two target different people and different problems, so they don't cannibalise each other. Running two schemes from the same category (two stamp cards, say) just confuses staff and customers.