No Hardware to Buy: Your Phone Is the Scanner

Saturday, eleven in the morning, four people deep. The person in front holds up a phone. Your barista points the tablet at it, taps once, and hands back a coffee. Three seconds, and the queue never noticed.

The counter is the one place a loyalty program has to be quick, and it is the place most of them are slowest. A queue does not wait for a device to boot, for somebody to find an app, or for software to decide whether a tap was intentional. Fideliya’s scanner is a web page. Staff open it in the browser on the phone or tablet already at the till, point the camera at the card, and the scan is done.

How a scan works

A customer’s loyalty card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet carries a QR code. Staff open the Fideliya scanner, the camera reads the code, and the customer’s card comes up with their name, their balance, and the actions available. Staff tap the action, Fideliya records it, and the card updates on the customer’s phone. The whole exchange is a few seconds and needs no typing for a stamp.

The scanner runs in the browser, so it works on an iPhone, an Android phone, an iPad or any tablet with a camera. There is no scanner hardware to buy, no app to install for staff, and no account the customer has to show. A new counter is a new browser tab.

The four things a scan can do

Action	On which card	What happens
Add a stamp	Visits card	The count goes up by one and the card updates on the phone
Add points	Points card	Staff type the points and the balance goes up by that amount
Claim a reward	Either card, once the goal is reached	The reward is marked claimed and the card starts its next cycle
Deduct from a gift card	Gift card	Staff type the purchase amount and the balance goes down

What the scanner refuses, in plain words

Fideliya refuses exactly two scans. If staff type an amount of points that would take the customer past the card’s goal, the scanner says so and shows how many points are left to the goal, so staff can add that many instead. If staff type a gift card deduction larger than the balance, the scanner refuses and shows the balance. In both cases the message is a number in the operator’s own language, not a sentence to read while the queue waits.

Fideliya never refuses a scan for coming too soon after the last one. There is no cooldown at the counter. If a customer buys two coffees for two colleagues and is scanned twice, both scans count, because the till is not the place for software to form an opinion about whether a tap was meant. Where a business wants visits rather than scans, the analytics apply a one-hour window when they are read, so two scans within an hour count as one visit on the dashboard while the customer’s stamps stay as they were.

Who can scan

The owner scans on every plan, including Free. Pro adds five team seats and Enterprise ten, and the owner’s own login never consumes a seat. Each seat has a role. A manager can run the counter and manage the program; staff can scan and see customers. A new barista gets a staff seat, scans from day one, and never sees the billing page.

Plan	Team seats beyond the owner	Locations
Free	0	1
Pro	5	4
Enterprise	10	Unlimited

Every scan knows where it happened

A business with more than one counter gives each one a location in Fideliya, and every scan is tagged with the location it happened at. The Free plan has one location, Pro four and Enterprise unlimited. On the paid plans the dashboard shows scans by location, so a bakery with a stall at the market and a shop in town sees which one a regular visits and which one is quiet on Tuesdays.

Why a browser scanner beats a device

A dedicated scanner is one more thing to charge, one more thing to break, one more thing to teach a new hire on their first shift. A staff app is an install on every phone and an update every month. A web page is neither. The scanner is wherever a browser is, which at a counter is everywhere, and it is on every plan including Free, because a loyalty program that cannot be scanned at the till is not a loyalty program.

All it asks for is a camera and a connection. Where the counter has a bar of signal, it works on whatever is already there.

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. Team seats and locations by plan are on the pricing page.