Loyalty app for small business
A loyalty app for a small business runs your rewards programme from the customer's phone. Stamps, points or cashback sit in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, so there is nothing to download. Customers scan a QR code once at your counter. Staff scan their card at the till. MSTRMND starts at £31 a month for one location and up to 100 customers, with unlimited free push notifications on every plan, no setup fee, and a 14-day free trial.
What you should expect to pay for
Most owners find out what a loyalty programme really costs after they have committed to one. Here is the full picture first.
| What you pay for | MSTRMND | What to watch for elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| The software | £31 to £115 a month by plan | Per-customer pricing, which grows as you succeed |
| Messaging your customers | £0. Unlimited push on every plan | Per-message fees on SMS-led tools |
| Setup | £0, and setup is done for you | Onboarding fees, sometimes several hundred |
| Trying it | 14-day free trial | Annual contracts signed before you have tested anything |
| The rewards themselves | Your margin | Nobody else's problem but yours |
That last row is the one people skip. The software is the small half of the cost. What you give away in rewards is usually larger, and it is the number worth modelling before you launch anything.
Pro tip. Model your reward cost as one free item in ten multiplied by your card completion rate, not by your customer count. Owners overestimate this badly, because they assume everyone finishes a card. Almost nobody does, and your dashboard will tell you the real figure inside one purchase cycle.
The three plans
| Plan | Annual billing | Covers | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | £31/mo, £372/yr | 1 location, 1 card type, up to 100 customers, 1 active promotion | A single site testing whether loyalty works at all |
| Grow | £69/mo, £828/yr | 5 locations, 3 card types, up to 1,000 customers, 5 staff, geo-push, RFM segments | Most established businesses. This is where most people land |
| Business | £115/mo, £1,380/yr | Multi-site, every card type, full control | Chains and multi-site operators |
Push notifications are unlimited on all three, including Starter. That difference compounds. On a per-message tool, the cost of talking to your customers climbs at exactly the moment your programme starts working.
Choosing a loyalty app for your small business
The common mistake is assuming loyalty means stamps. Stamps are excellent, but only when customers buy roughly the same thing every visit.
| Your situation | Card type | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Flat prices, frequent visits. Coffee, a cut, a wash | Stamp card | Progress is visible, and visible progress is what brings people back |
| Wide price range. A salon menu, a clinic, an optician | Cashback or points | A £22 dry cut and a £160 colour should not earn the same reward |
| Predictable recurring service | Membership | Turns variable revenue into monthly revenue |
| Filling a quiet day, or winning someone back | Coupon | One-time and dated, sent to a chosen group rather than posted publicly |
| Bringing in new faces cheaply | Referral or gift card | The newcomer's first visit is paid for by somebody else |
MSTRMND carries all of them on one account: stamp, points, cashback, discount, coupon, gift, membership, prepaid, multipass, referral, subscription and custom cards. You are not locked into the first choice you make.
Cashback beats a discount card
If your customers already come back often, use cashback rather than a standing discount. The two feel almost identical at the till. They behave completely differently afterwards.
A discount is spent at the moment of sale. You give up the margin, the customer walks out, and nothing about that transaction gives them a reason to return. Cashback gives up the same margin and turns it into a balance that only exists with you. The customer leaves holding something they can only spend by coming back.
| Discount card | Cashback card | |
|---|---|---|
| When the value lands | At the till, instantly | After the visit, as a balance |
| What the customer keeps | Nothing | Credit that only redeems with you |
| Effect on your prices | Resets what your customer thinks normal costs | Leaves your price list intact |
| Reason to return | None | The balance itself |
| Best for | Clearing stock, one-off pushes | Any business with genuine repeat custom |
Pro tip. You do not need a dramatic rate. the CMA's 2024 review of supermarket loyalty pricing found members saving an average of 17% to 25% on loyalty-priced groceries, and that is a sector fighting on price. A service business with genuine repeat custom gets more from a low single-digit cashback rate than from a headline discount, because the balance keeps working after the customer leaves.
Will your customers actually use a wallet card?
Mostly, yes. It depends on their age more than anything else. UK Finance's UK Payment Markets 2025 reports that 65% of UK adults were registered for at least one mobile payment service in 2025, up from 57% the year before.
| Age group | Registered for a mobile payment service |
|---|---|
| 25 to 34 | 89% |
| All UK adults | 65% |
| Over 65 | 29% |
If your customers skew 25 to 45, the wallet is already how they pay. If they skew older, and some clinics and opticians do, keep a paper route open alongside it. Nobody is served by forcing a card onto someone who does not want one.
Does a loyalty programme actually change what people do?
Yes, and in a specific way that should shape how you set your reward. Kivetz, Urminsky and Zheng (2006), Journal of Marketing Research tracked a real café stamp programme and found three things.
| What they found | The number |
|---|---|
| Customers bought faster as the reward came into view | 20% acceleration, roughly five days off a full card (24.6 days against 29.4) |
| A part-filled card finished sooner | A 12-stamp card with two free stamps took 12.7 days, against 15.6 for a plain 10-stamp card needing the same ten purchases |
| Behaviour collapsed after the reward was claimed | Purchase rates reset downward, and customers were most likely to leave at that exact moment |
Read those together and two rules fall out. Shorten the distance, not the reward. And treat a redemption as the beginning of the next card rather than the end of the last one.
What running one actually involves
- Choose a reward and check the maths. Reachable in four to six visits, and costing less than the visits it brings back are worth.
- Put a QR code where people pay. This is the whole acquisition funnel. Your programme will only ever be as big as that one sentence at the counter.
- Scan at the till. The staff scanner app is included on every plan.
- Send something once a month. A quiet-day offer, a nudge to people who have drifted, a birthday. It costs nothing.
- Look at who stopped coming. Paper could never do this. It is the part that pays for the subscription by itself.
Your team is the programme
A loyalty programme is only ever as big as the number of people who were asked to join it. That number is decided at the counter, by whoever takes payment, on every single transaction. Not by marketing.
This is the part that quietly decides whether any of this works, and it is the part most owners never manage. A programme with a great reward and an inconsistent front desk loses to a modest reward and a team who ask every time.
Three things make it stick:
- Script the ask so nobody has to invent it under pressure.
- Put it inside the payment routine, not after it. Anything optional at the end of a transaction happens on quiet days only.
- Show staff their own numbers. People ask more often when sign-ups are visible and attributed.
Make the offer explicit
People hand over a phone number and their buying history. Say plainly what they get for it. A card that appears in someone's wallet without a clear promise attached is the reason loyalty schemes get ignored, and it is the reason some get resented.
Put three things in front of the customer at the moment they join:
- What they earn, in plain terms. Not "rewards", but "5% back on everything, spendable here".
- What you collect, in one line. Their number, what they buy, and when.
- What you will send, and how they stop it. Frequency and a one-tap opt-out.
That clarity is not only good manners. It is the same disclosure that consent rules expect, so writing it once solves the marketing problem and most of the compliance problem together.
Pro tip. Give your team the reason, not just the script. A stylist who knows the card is what brings someone back in three weeks will mention it unprompted. One told to "push the loyalty thing" will mention it on quiet days only.
When it is not worth it
Under about 30 regulars, you already know everyone by name, and software adds nothing you cannot do in your head. A once-in-a-lifetime purchase has no loop to reward, so frequency has to exist before any of this matters. And if nobody owns the programme, it will decay into a monthly charge that returns nothing.
Those are real cases. If you are in one of them, do not buy this.
Pro tip. Say it at the counter, not just in the small print. the ICO's direct marketing guidance is clear that you have to tell people you intend to market to them when you collect their details, and identify yourself and how to opt out in every message you send. The sentence that satisfies that is also the sentence that makes the offer land.
Frequently asked questions
Do my customers need to download an app? No. The card goes into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, both already on the phone. Only your staff use an app, and the scanner is included on every plan.
How much does it cost to start? £31 a month on Starter, with no setup fee and a 14-day free trial. Three or four extra returning customers a month covers it.
Can I run it across more than one location? Yes. Up to five locations on Grow, with location-triggered push at each of them.
What happens to my existing paper card holders? Honour the stamps they already have. Add them at their current count on the next visit, and the paper card retires itself.
Which card type should I start with? Stamps if your prices are flat, cashback if they vary. You can add a second type later on Grow without starting over.
Sources
- UK Finance, UK Payment Markets 2025. Press release (ukfinance.org.uk)
- Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O. & Zheng, Y. (2006). The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected. Journal of Marketing Research 43(1), 39–58. Full paper (columbia.edu)