Paper loyalty card or digital loyalty card?
Updated · 4 min read
A box of paper cards by the till and a rubber stamp in the drawer: that is how most cafés, döner shops and bakeries in Türkiye start a loyalty programme. It's cheap and everyone understands it. So when is it not enough?
The real cost of a paper card
The cost of a paper card isn't just the printing, the rubber stamp and the ink. The real cost is the part you don't see:
- A lost card is a lost customer. A card lost at the ninth stamp is rarely started again.
- Fake stamps are easy. With a similar rubber stamp anyone can fill their own card, and you can't tell which stamps are real.
- It tells you nothing. How many people have a card, who comes every day, who hasn't been in for a month? A paper card has no answer.
What a digital loyalty card changes
A digital card lives on the one thing customers carry every day: their phone. It goes into Apple Wallet on iPhone and onto the home screen on Android. Customers download nothing.
| Paper card | Digital card | |
|---|---|---|
| Gets lost? | Yes | No, it's on the phone |
| Fake stamps | Easy | Hard, every stamp is logged |
| See who comes back? | No | Yes |
| Reach your customers? | No | On the lock screen, with consent |
| Reward reminder | None | “Your reward is ready 🎁” |
Which one suits you?
If you have a handful of customers a day and know them all by name, paper may be enough. As regulars grow, more staff work the till or you open a second branch, tracking gets hard. That's where a digital card helps.
You don't have to switch overnight. Customers who don't use phones can stay on paper while everyone else scans the QR.
Cost
Stampul's Starter plan is free for up to 150 stamps a month. İşletme, with unlimited stamps and offers, is ₺590 a month + VAT. See pricing.
See how it works, or pick your kind of shop on the digital loyalty card page.
