Loyalty card software cost comparison 2026: Stampo vs Square, Toast, Stamp Me, Loopy & 7 more
May 25, 2026 · Antoine Pedretti · 7 min read
Loyalty card software comes in four flavours that don't compete with each other directly, but their pricing pages make it nearly impossible to tell which category you're shopping in. This article fixes that.
Below: an 11-tool feature × price matrix as of May 2026, a hidden-costs section that the pricing pages don't tell you, and an honest "best for" verdict per tool. We make one of these (Stampo), and we'll be clear about where we don't win.
If you're earlier in the question — should I even bother? — start with the pillar piece: Is a digital loyalty card worth it for a small business?. This article assumes you've decided yes and are picking a tool.
The 2026 loyalty SaaS landscape, in 30 seconds
There are four categories. Most comparison articles mix them up and confuse buyers.
- Standalone wallet-pass tools — cards live in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, no separate consumer app, no POS integration required. Best for shops without a connected POS or who don't want to be locked into one. Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy Loyalty, Magic Stamp, Passtastic, WinStamp.
- POS-integrated loyalty modules — bolted onto a full-stack POS (Square, Toast, Lightspeed). Best if you already run one of those as your till. Useless otherwise — you can't buy the loyalty module without the POS underneath.
- E-commerce loyalty platforms — built for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce. Smile.io, Yotpo. Different problem, different shape; included for completeness.
- Enterprise — Open Loyalty, Annex Cloud, Antavo. Custom pricing, sales calls, six-week deployments. Out of scope for a small shop.
What follows compares all four categories so you can see the difference, then narrows to the standalone tools where most small shops actually choose.
The comparison table
Prices verified against each vendor's published pricing page in May 2026. Per-location pricing flagged where it applies. Currencies as published.
| Tool | Category | Smallest paid plan | Apple Wallet | Google Wallet | No POS required | Free trial | Lifetime tier | Print kit | Per-location fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stampo | Standalone | €9 / month | ✓ (rolling out) | ✓ | ✓ | 14 days, no card | ✓ €199 once | ✓ included | None |
| Stamp Me | Standalone | $25 / month | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 14 days | — | Add-on | None up to 3 |
| Loopy Loyalty | Standalone | $25 / month | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 15 days | — | Add-on | $15/extra location |
| Magic Stamp | Standalone | $30 / month | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 7 days | — | Add-on | Yes on higher plans |
| Passtastic | Standalone | $39 / month | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 14 days | — | ✓ | None published |
| WinStamp | Standalone | $19 / month | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 7 days | — | — | Yes |
| Square Loyalty | POS module | $45 / month per location | ✓ via Square | ✓ via Square | ✗ — needs Square POS | 30 days | — | — | $45 / location |
| Toast Loyalty | POS module | $89 / month | ✓ via Toast | ✓ via Toast | ✗ — needs Toast POS | Varies | — | — | Per location |
| Lightspeed Loyalty | POS module | $39 / month add-on | ✓ via Lightspeed | ✓ via Lightspeed | ✗ — needs Lightspeed POS | 14 days | — | — | Per location |
| Smile.io | E-commerce | Free starter, Pro from $49 | ✗ (online points, not wallet pass) | ✗ | ✓ but online-only | Free tier available | — | — | None |
| Yotpo Loyalty | E-commerce | from $199 / month | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ but online-only | Demo only | — | — | None |
Three things stand out:
- Stampo is the cheapest always-paid wallet-pass tool for in-store SMBs in May 2026 at €9 / month. Smile.io is technically free at the entry tier but is e-commerce only — wrong category for a café or a salon.
- Lifetime pricing is rare. Stampo's €199 one-time is the only published lifetime tier in the standalone category. For a shop with no plans to close, the math is straightforward: pays for itself in 22 months vs Stampo Monthly, then it's free forever.
- Print kit included matters more than the table suggests. Without it, a "free trial" still costs you a print-shop run before you can put a card on the counter. Stampo + Passtastic ship the print kit (poster, sticker, table tent, mini-cards) as PDFs in the merchant dashboard. The rest expect you to design and source your own.
The hidden costs the pricing pages don't show
A few things land on the bill weeks after signup that aren't on any vendor's "from $X / month" hero line.
Setup time
For the standalone tools, setup is a coffee break. For the POS-integrated modules it's a project:
- Square / Toast / Lightspeed Loyalty — 2 to 6 weeks of POS data migration, employee training, settings tuning. If your till is currently a card reader, the loyalty module costs you the entire POS migration and the loyalty subscription on top.
- Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy, Magic Stamp, Passtastic, WinStamp — 10 minutes to a couple of hours, mostly fiddling with brand colors and rewards.
For a small shop with no IT person, those POS migration weeks are real money. A senior staffer doing 8 hours of onboarding at €15/hr is €120; multiply by however many weeks it actually takes.
Per-location fees
If you have or plan multiple locations, the standalone tools differ wildly:
- Stampo + Stamp Me — no per-location fees published as of May 2026
- Loopy Loyalty — extra $15/month per location beyond the first
- Magic Stamp + WinStamp — per-location pricing kicks in on higher plans
- Square / Toast / Lightspeed — $39-$89 per month per location
A 5-location small chain on Toast Loyalty pays $445/month for loyalty alone. The same chain on Stampo pays €9 — assuming the upcoming multi-location support ships before they need it.
Lock-in risk
The POS-integrated modules tie your loyalty data to your POS subscription. Cancel the POS, the loyalty program goes with it. Same problem in reverse — outgrowing Toast for any reason orphans your customer database.
Standalone tools are portable by design: the customer's loyalty card is in their wallet, and switching merchant-side tools is a CSV export and re-import.
"Free" starter tiers
Smile.io's free tier sounds like the obvious starting point until you read the limits — 200 monthly active customers, 100 orders, only the simplest rewards. A café running 50 transactions/day hits 200 distinct repeat customers in a fortnight. The free tier is a gateway to the Pro plan, not a working solution.
Email re-engagement modules
If you want to send "haven't seen you" emails to lapsed customers, several tools charge extra:
- Smile.io and Yotpo include email in higher tiers ($49-$199/mo)
- Square, Toast, Lightspeed sell email separately as a $25-$50/mo add-on
- Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy — built-in basic notifications, no email-marketing-grade segmentation
For most small shops, the wallet pass's built-in "lapsed customer" notification (Apple & Google both support it natively) is enough. You don't actually need a full email marketing module for a 200-customer café.
What each tool is best for
| Tool | Best for |
|---|---|
| Stampo | Independent cafés, bakeries, salons, small shops without a connected POS — and any merchant who wants the cheapest published lifetime tier in the wallet-pass category. |
| Stamp Me | Multi-location SMB chains where the per-location story matters AND who prefer a vendor with longer market presence. |
| Loopy Loyalty | Established player; useful if you want the most mature feature set in the standalone category and don't mind paying ~3× what Stampo costs. |
| Magic Stamp | If you specifically want a tool with strong design-customisation options at a mid-price point. |
| Passtastic | Restaurant + hospitality bias; their template library skews that direction. |
| WinStamp | Cheapest standalone alternative if Stampo for any reason isn't a fit; smaller feature set. |
| Square Loyalty | You already run Square POS as your full till. Don't add a second tool. |
| Toast Loyalty | Restaurant on Toast POS. Same rule. |
| Lightspeed Loyalty | Retail or restaurant on Lightspeed POS. Same rule. |
| Smile.io | Online-only Shopify or BigCommerce store. |
| Yotpo Loyalty | Larger online stores doing real volume + wanting loyalty + reviews + SMS in one stack. |
Why we built Stampo when these tools already exist
Honest answer: most of the standalone wallet-pass tools in this comparison were built between 2014 and 2019, priced for the 2018 SaaS market ($25-50/mo seemed normal then), and they kept the price as their cost structures eased. We came in at €9/mo because we wanted to be the obvious answer for a one-person café — not the obvious answer for a five-location chain that's already paying for Square.
We also ship the print kit included in every plan, because the most common reason a new loyalty program dies in week one isn't the software — it's that there's nothing to point a customer at. A poster on the wall and a QR-code sticker by the till do more for activation than any feature on the dashboard.
If a tool above fits your use case better than Stampo, use it. The table doesn't lie. If you want to start with the cheapest published price and the fastest setup, open a Stampo trial — 14 days, no card on file required.
FAQ
Which loyalty card software is cheapest for a small business?
Stampo at €9 / month is the cheapest always-paid wallet-pass loyalty tool for in-store small businesses in May 2026. Smile.io has a free tier but is e-commerce-only. POS-integrated modules start at $39-$89 / month and require their parent POS subscription.
Is there a free loyalty card app for small businesses?
For in-store use: not really. Smile.io's free tier is online-only and caps at 200 monthly active customers. For most small shops, the cheapest viable option is a paid wallet-pass tool — Stampo's 14-day trial is the longest no-card-required runway in the category.
Does Square Loyalty work without Square POS?
No. Square Loyalty is sold as a module of the Square POS stack and cannot be purchased standalone. If your till isn't already Square, you'd be paying for the full POS plus loyalty — not the right shape for a single-location café.
Can I switch loyalty tools without losing my customers?
The standalone wallet-pass tools (Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy, etc.) all support CSV export of the customer list. The wallet pass itself is harder to migrate — your customers would need to re-add the new tool's pass. POS-integrated modules tie the data to the POS subscription, so switching POS means switching loyalty.
How long does it take to set up a digital loyalty card?
Standalone wallet-pass tools: 10 minutes to a couple of hours. POS-integrated modules: 2 to 6 weeks (data migration, training, settings). E-commerce platforms: a few hours once the store is connected.
If the table reads like Stampo is too obviously the answer, test it directly — it's faster than reading another comparison. Or if you're still on the should-I-even-bother question, go back to the worth-it pillar.
Pricing accurate as of May 2026, verified against each vendor's published pricing page. Updated quarterly.