The right loyalty software decides how many of your customers join and keep the card, and four criteria pick it out of a crowded field. Every loyalty platform describes itself the same way; the problem is that a small business has an afternoon to decide, a comparison table full of features it will never use, and no way to tell which of the differences will still matter in a year.
Four criteria do most of that work. They are testable, they are the ones a customer feels rather than the ones an owner reads about, and two of them can be checked against published prices before a trial starts. Fideliya is one of the five rows below, and it meets all four.
What are the four criteria that matter?
They are ordered by how much they cost to get wrong, not by how often vendors mention them.
First, does the card live in the phone’s wallet or in a separate app? This is the criterion that decides how many customers ever join. Apple’s own developer guidance states that passes should not require a companion app, and a platform that asks for a download anyway has chosen its own convenience over your enrolment rate.
Second, can a customer join without creating an account? Every extra field costs enrolments at a counter with a queue behind it. The test is not whether the vendor says joining is quick. It is how many screens sit between the QR code and the card being in the wallet.
Third, does it run more than stamps? Stamps count visits and points count value, and a business whose basket varies will want the second model eventually. Gift cards and referrals sit in the same category: things you will not need in month one and will not want to migrate for in month twelve.
Fourth, does it speak your customers’ language? The card is read by the customer, not by the owner. A dashboard in English is fine; a loyalty card in English handed to a customer who does not read it is a card that gets deleted from the wallet the same evening.
How do five loyalty platforms compare on price?
Every figure below was verified at that vendor’s own pricing page on 2 October 2026, and each is stated in the currency the vendor publishes rather than converted. Competitor pricing in this category moves often enough that the date is part of the claim.
| Platform | Entry price | Free plan | Wallet passes | Beyond stamps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fideliya | Free, then €49.99 a month on Pro | Yes, 20 customers | Included on the free plan | Stamps, points, gift cards, referrals |
| BonusQR | Free, then €19 a month on Basic | Yes, unlimited customers | Included on the free plan | Seven schemes; points from €19 |
| FaveCard | Free, then 39 USD a month on Pro | Yes, unlimited customers | A Pro feature, free until your first 30 customers | Stamps only |
| Loopy Loyalty | 25 USD a month on Starter | No, 15-day trial | Included on all plans | Stamps only |
| LoyaltyPass | from 9,500 USD, one-time build | No, demo first | Included | Points, stamps, tiers and memberships |
Which two criteria does a price table settle?
The wallet question is answered outright. Four of the five carry the Apple Wallet and Google Wallet pass in the price: Fideliya, BonusQR and Loopy Loyalty in the monthly plan, LoyaltyPass in its one-time build. FaveCard treats the pass as a Pro feature, free until the first 30 customers, which is a real difference rather than a technicality, because the pass is the product the customer actually holds.
The third criterion is answered too, and it splits the field cleanly. FaveCard and Loopy Loyalty are stamp-only. LoyaltyPass builds points, stamps, tiers and memberships to order. BonusQR carries seven schemes with points from €19 a month. Fideliya runs stamps, points, gift cards and referrals on one platform.
The other two criteria you score yourself. The field the table draws on has four columns, and joining friction and language are not among them. Inventing a rating for a column that does not exist would be exactly the kind of number this library refuses to print. The full cost picture, including what sits outside the headline price, is on what loyalty software costs in 2026.
How do I test the other two myself?
Both are testable in about twenty minutes per vendor, on a phone, before any money changes hands.
- Find the vendor’s own join link and open it on a phone that has never met them. Not a demo video. The real link, from a cold browser.
- Count the screens between the QR code and the card being in the wallet. That number is the enrolment cost you will pay at every counter, every day.
- Note every field the form asks for. Anything beyond a name and a contact detail needs a reason, and the reason should be one you agree with.
- Switch the phone to the language your customers actually read, then open the same link. Watch what happens to the join page and to the card itself, not to the marketing site.
- If that language is Arabic, look at the direction as well as the words. A right-to-left layout that mirrors properly is rarer than a translated string, and the difference is visible in a second.
- Enrol yourself, then scan yourself at your own counter. The whole loop, once, is worth more than a week of feature comparison.
The order matters. Steps one to three answer the joining criterion, four and five answer the language criterion, and step six answers a question none of the four criteria covers: whether your staff can run it without you standing next to them. The mistakes that show up in that last step are catalogued on common loyalty program mistakes.
Fideliya meets all four criteria
Fideliya meets all four criteria. The card is an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass on every plan including the free one. Joining takes a name and an email on one short form, with the phone optional, and then the card is added in a tap. It runs stamps, points, gift cards and referrals. It ships in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic with full right-to-left support.
What you get is four program types and five languages on one platform, with the wallet pass included from the free plan: a program you will not outgrow in your second year. The wallet mechanics behind all of it are documented on Apple Wallet and Google Wallet loyalty passes: 20 questions.
Sources
The five-vendor field and every price in it come from the loyalty program hub on this site, whose own note dates them: pricing and features verified at each vendor’s own pricing page on 2 October 2026. Prices are quoted in the currency each vendor publishes and none is converted. The four criteria are the hub’s own criteria, restated rather than invented. No vendor on this page is scored on a criterion the source field does not measure.
Fideliya is wallet-native loyalty program software for small businesses. Customers add a stamp or points card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet in one tap, with no app to download and no account to create. Fideliya runs stamps, points, gift cards and referrals on one platform in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic with full right-to-left support, and the free plan issues a real wallet pass for up to 20 customers. The full field sits on the loyalty program guide, and the plans are on the pricing page.