Short answer. PerkClub and Loyverse solve different problems. Loyverse is a free POS system with a built-in points-based loyalty add-on, used by small retailers and food-and-beverage operators globally. PerkClub is a white-label subscription platform that books monthly recurring revenue under your café's own brand, with no POS integration required. Pick Loyverse if you need a free till and a basic points programme bundled together. Pick PerkClub if your problem is predictable monthly cashflow and brand ownership. The two can run side by side — Loyverse handling sales, PerkClub handling memberships.
Different categories of product
Loyverse is, first and foremost, a point-of-sale system. The till app is free on iOS and Android, you can run it on consumer hardware, and the loyalty programme — a points-per-pound mechanic — is bundled in. The customer scans, accrues points, and redeems them later. The whole thing lives inside the Loyverse customer app or a printed receipt code.
PerkClub is not a POS and never tries to be. It is a single-purpose subscription platform: customers pay you a fixed monthly fee through Stripe in exchange for an ongoing perk — a daily coffee, an unlimited brew bar, two haircuts a month — branded as your business's own club. The two products do not occupy the same shelf in the toolkit.
Pricing model: free POS vs flat platform fee
The headline that pulls operators to Loyverse is the price tag — the core POS is free, with paid add-ons for inventory, employee management and advanced analytics typically priced in the £20–£40/month band per add-on. Card processing is handled by whichever payment provider you connect, often SumUp or a similar processor in the UK. The loyalty module itself is free.
PerkClub charges a flat monthly platform fee plus standard Stripe processing on what you bill your subscribers. The fee does not scale linearly with member count — the 200th member costs the same to host as the 20th. The fee does not depend on POS choice either, because PerkClub doesn't touch the POS. See the PerkClub pricing page for the current figure.
The honest comparison isn't free vs paid. It's "what problem are you actually buying a solution for?" If the problem is "I need a till", Loyverse is genuinely the cheapest credible answer. If the problem is "I need £30,000 of booked annual revenue under my own brand", a free till does not solve that. They are not substitutes.
The customer experience: app points vs branded membership
Loyverse customers identify themselves at the till — phone number, QR code, or the Loyverse customer app — and accrue points on each transaction. Points are usually pegged at 1 point per £1 spent, redeemable against future purchases at a fixed rate the operator sets. It works. Most operators see a modest lift in repeat-visit rate from the points mechanic.
The friction is real, though. Customers either need to remember the phone number trick or have downloaded the Loyverse app — the same generic app whether they're at your café in Hackney, a corner shop in Manchester, or a bar in Lisbon. The branding is Loyverse's, not yours.
PerkClub members carry a wallet pass — a tile in Apple or Google Wallet, branded as your café's club, with your logo on the card art. There's no separate app to download. At the till, your staff scan a QR code on the kiosk; the pass redeems the perk and logs the visit. The customer has joined your brand, not a marketplace.
Vendor lock-in: replacing the till is hard, replacing a marketing tool is easy
The structural risk of bundling loyalty with POS is that you marry the two decisions. If your loyalty programme is failing, fixing it means changing your till. If your till stops fitting your business — say you outgrow Loyverse and want to move to Lightspeed or Square for inventory management — you also lose your customer database and points history.
PerkClub deliberately avoids that coupling. Run any till you like and PerkClub is unaffected. Switch tills next year, and PerkClub keeps running. Cancel PerkClub and your till keeps running. The interfaces are independent because the products are independent. For an indie operator who has already changed POS once and doesn't fancy doing it again to fix loyalty, that separation matters.
The economics that decide which platform fits
A free POS plus a free points module sounds like a no-brainer, but the maths often disagrees. A points programme that lifts visit frequency from 4 to 5 visits per month for a meaningful share of your customer base is genuinely valuable — but it never books revenue in advance. Cashflow timing doesn't move.
A subscription does. 100 members at £25/month is £2,500 of MRR — £30,000 a year, booked before anyone walks in. That number is roughly the rent on a B-grade UK high street unit, and once it's booked it changes how you negotiate with suppliers, plan staffing, and survive January.
If your business problem is "I need a till that won't bankrupt me", Loyverse is a sensible choice. If your business problem is "I need predictable monthly revenue under my own brand without touching my till", that's exactly what PerkClub is built for. Many UK independents end up running both — Loyverse for sales, PerkClub for memberships — because they target different parts of the same business.
For a fuller treatment of how subscriptions, stamp cards and points compare, see subscription vs stamp card vs points.
Bottom line
PerkClub and Loyverse aren't really competitors — they're complements. If you need a free POS and basic points, Loyverse is the right call. If you need booked recurring revenue under your own brand, PerkClub is. If you'd like to talk through which fits your café, the PerkClub team is happy to walk through your numbers.
