Most of the vocabulary around loyalty programs is borrowed from three places at once: the corner shop that used ink, the airline that invented tiers, and the phone platform that now carries the card. The result is a set of words that sound interchangeable and are not.
Forty-two of them are defined below, each in under fifty words, grouped by what they are about. Each term has its own address, so a definition can be linked to on its own. Where a definition describes something specific to this product it says Fideliya; where it describes the category, it does not.
How this glossary is arranged
| Group | What it covers | Read it when |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanics | How earning and rewarding work | You are designing the program |
| Wallet | How the card lives on a phone | You are choosing a platform |
| Measurement | What the dashboard reports | You are reading the numbers |
| Plans and limits | What a subscription includes | You are comparing prices |
Four terms carry most of the confusion in this category, and it is worth naming them before the list:
- Goal against reward. The goal is the number; the reward is the thing. Vendors routinely use reward for both.
- Reached against redeemed. A customer can finish a card and never claim it. These are two counts and they differ.
- Repeat rate against repeat rate. Two legitimate calculations share the name. Read the label before the number.
- Delivered against accepted. A platform taking a message is not a person reading it, and only one of those is observable here.
Mechanics
Loyalty program
A standing offer that rewards a customer for coming back. The customer earns a countable thing on each visit or purchase, and at an agreed total the business gives something in return. Everything else in this glossary is a detail of that sentence.
Stamp card
A loyalty program that counts visits. One visit adds one stamp regardless of what was spent, and a fixed number of stamps earns the reward. The oldest and clearest mechanic, and the right one wherever the basket barely varies.
Points program
A loyalty program that counts value rather than visits. Each purchase awards points in proportion to what was spent, and a points total earns the reward. It rewards the size of the basket, not the frequency of the trip.
Stamp
One unit of progress on a visit-based card, added by the business at the counter. Historically an ink mark, now usually a scan. A stamp represents a visit, so two purchases in one visit are still one stamp.
Point
One unit of progress on a value-based card, awarded in proportion to spend. The rate at which currency converts to points is the business’s own decision and is what makes two points programs incomparable to each other.
Goal
The number of stamps or points that earns the reward. The single most consequential setting in a loyalty program: too low and the reward costs more than the loyalty, too high and most customers never arrive.
Reward
What the customer receives on reaching the goal. Usually a free item rather than a discount, because a free item has a name and a discount has a percentage, and customers remember names.
Redemption
The moment a customer claims a reward they have earned. Distinct from reaching the goal: a reward can sit earned and unclaimed for weeks, and a program that counts only redemptions understates how many customers finished.
Enrolment
A customer joining the program and receiving their card. In Fideliya this is a short form asking for a name and an email, with the phone optional, followed by adding the pass to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
Scan
The act of the business reading a customer’s card and recording progress on it. In a wallet-native program the staff member scans the customer’s pass, which is the reverse of the customer scanning a poster to join.
Tier reward
An intermediate reward placed before the main goal, so a long ladder has something on it earlier. Fideliya calls these bands and lets a card carry several, which is how a ten-visit goal stops feeling like ten empty visits.
Referral
An existing customer bringing a new one, tracked so both can be credited. In Fideliya the referrer’s bonus is held pending until the referred customer is actually scanned, so an invitation nobody acts on pays nothing.
Gift card
A stored balance a customer can spend, issued and redeemed by the business. Adjacent to loyalty rather than part of it: loyalty rewards behaviour, a gift card carries money. Fideliya issues them into the same wallet as the loyalty pass.
Loyalty type switch
Changing a live card from counting visits to counting points, or back. Destructive by nature: the two progress figures are not convertible, so in Fideliya a switch wipes every holder’s accrued progress and asks for confirmation first.
Wallet
Wallet pass
A card held in the phone’s built-in wallet application rather than in a separate app. It updates from the business’s server, shows a barcode, and survives a new phone because it is tied to the wallet account rather than to an install.
Wallet-native
Describes a loyalty product whose primary card is a wallet pass rather than a screen inside its own app. The distinction decides enrolment: a wallet-native card asks the customer to add something they already have software for.
Apple Wallet
Apple’s built-in pass and payment application on iPhone and Apple Watch. It holds boarding passes, tickets, payment cards and loyalty cards, and Apple’s own developer guidance is that a pass should not require a companion app.
Google Wallet
Google’s equivalent on Android, holding payment cards, tickets and loyalty objects. Loyalty cards are created through the Wallet Objects API as a class describing the program and an object describing one customer’s membership.
PKPass
The file format of an Apple Wallet pass: a signed archive holding the pass definition, its images and its localisations. The signature is what lets a phone trust that the pass came from the business that claims it.
Loyalty object
Google Wallet’s term for one customer’s instance of a loyalty program, created against a loyalty class that describes the program itself. Updating the object is how a balance changes on an Android phone.
Pass update
A change pushed to a card already in a wallet, so the number on it changes without the customer doing anything. This is the mechanism that makes a wallet card different in kind from a photograph of a stamp card.
Lock-screen notification
A short message shown on a phone’s lock screen by the wallet application when a pass changes or a business sends one. It reaches a customer without an app installed and without an email address being used.
Broadcast
A message a business sends to holders of one loyalty card. In Fideliya it is capped at 150 characters, may be addressed to everyone, to customers seen in the last 30 days, or to those not seen for over 30, and is allowanced per month by plan.
QR code
The two-dimensional barcode used at both ends of a loyalty program: printed at the counter for customers to join, and shown on the customer’s pass for staff to scan on each visit. The same technology doing two opposite jobs.
Measurement
Active customer
A customer scanned inside the reporting window. Fideliya prints the count beside the total ever enrolled, because a hundred scans from twelve people describes a different business from a hundred scans from ninety.
Returning customer
A customer scanned more than once inside the window. The narrowest honest definition of loyalty a loyalty program can report, and the one that takes longest to become meaningful after launch.
Repeat rate
The share of customers who came back. Two different calculations wear this name: returning customers over active customers inside a window, and lifetime repeaters over everyone ever enrolled. Fideliya labels the two differently on purpose.
Loyalty funnel
One cohort followed through four stages: joined, made a first visit, came back, earned a reward. Each stage in Fideliya is selected from the one above it, so every drop between stages is a real drop rather than two unrelated counts.
Presence window
The period inside which a customer still counts as present. Fideliya uses 30 days, measured from the last visit or from enrolment for a customer who has never scanned, and the same window decides both halves of the question.
Health band
A grouping of customers by how long since they were last seen. Fideliya uses four: active at 0 to 7 days with a real visit required, cooling at 8 to 14, at risk at 15 to 29, and drifting at 30 or more.
Lapsed customer
A customer who used to come and has stopped. Distinct from a customer who joined and never started, which looks similar in a total and needs a different response entirely.
Redemption rate
The share of enrolled customers who reached and claimed a reward. The number that judges the goal rather than the traffic, and the one most vulnerable to being quoted from a vendor benchmark rather than measured.
Weekly rhythm
The distribution of visits across days and hours. Fideliya renders it as a grid with the peak window named. It is the one loyalty metric that is really about staffing and offers rather than about customers.
Accepted, not delivered
The distinction between a platform taking a message and a person seeing it. The wallet channel has no read receipt, so Fideliya records that Apple and Google accepted a broadcast and never that anyone opened it.
First-scan latency
The time between a customer enrolling and being scanned for the first time. It separates a program joined at the counter from one joined at home, and the two behave differently from that point on.
Plans and limits
Free plan
A plan with no monthly price and a capped feature set. Fideliya’s covers 20 customers at one location and issues a real Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass, which is what makes it a plan rather than a trial.
Plan tier
One rung of a pricing ladder, each including everything below it plus its own additions. Fideliya has three: Free, Pro and Enterprise, and every limit in this section is set per tier.
Customer cap
The number of enrolled customers a plan allows per business. The limit that usually decides when a loyalty program starts costing money, and the one worth checking against your enrolment rate rather than your customer count.
Active pass slot
A live loyalty card a business may run at one time. Fideliya includes one per business on every plan, which is why choosing between stamps and points is a decision to make before launch rather than after it.
Broadcast allowance
The number of messages a plan includes each month, refilled monthly with no rollover. Fideliya includes 1 on Free, 3 on Pro and 10 on Enterprise, with top-up packs for a month that needs more.
Team seat
A named staff login separate from the owner’s, so scans and changes are attributable to a person. Fideliya starts them at Pro; the owner never consumes one.
Location
A physical site a business scans from, reported separately so a two-site business can see which one its regulars use. Fideliya allows one on Free and more on the paid plans.
Sources
The generic definitions are the ordinary meanings the category uses, written plainly rather than borrowed from any one vendor’s marketing. The wallet terms follow Apple’s Wallet passes documentation and Google’s Wallet Objects loyalty documentation. Every definition describing a Fideliya behaviour, limit or label is read from this product’s own configuration, source and message catalogue on 5 September 2026, and each file is named in the source note on this article. No definition on this page carries a percentage, a price or a benchmark, because a glossary is the easiest place to hide one and the hardest place to notice it.
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 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 is on the loyalty program guide, and the plans are on the pricing page.