Who wrote this
This page is written by Rewardfinity. We make one of the two products compared on it and would like you to use ours. Read it with that in mind.
Two things follow. We quote no Square price anywhere — their packaging changes, we would not notice the day it did, and a stale number is worse than none. Check their pricing page. And where we cannot verify their behaviour from the outside, we say so rather than assert a gap that may not exist.
Every statement about Square on this page is read from their public documentation and their product as it stood while we wrote, not from an inside source and not from anyone's benchmark. Treat it as a prompt to check, not a citation. Nothing here quotes a research figure, a market share or a conversion rate, because we have none we could stand behind.
The comparison
Eight decision points. The Square column reflects our understanding at the time of writing — a prompt for your own check, not a citation.
| Decision point | Square Loyalty | Rewardfinity |
|---|---|---|
| POS dependency | Runs inside Square, and assumes Square is the till | Square natively; Clover, Lightspeed, Loyverse, Zettle and Vend via Zapier webhooks; a REST API for the rest |
| Setup effort | The lowest we have seen anywhere. Switch on, pick a rule, done | Higher. Connect a till, choose a model, write the rule. An afternoon, not a coffee break |
| Program models | Points, earned per visit, per amount, or per item | Points, stamp cards, tiers, referrals, promo codes, raffles, spin-to-win, prepaid punch cards |
| Stamp cards | Points-per-visit behaves like one, but the customer sees a balance, not a card | A card as such: threshold, stamps per purchase, minimum spend, up to five milestones, remainder carried forward |
| Wallet member cards | Check their current documentation | Hosted member page and PWA for everyone; Google Wallet is a configured path; Apple Wallet public launch remains dark pending its physical canary |
| Per-staff attribution | A team permission governs who may manage loyalty. We found no per-employee signup attribution | Counter actions are attributed to the staff member who took them, and drive a staff spin wheel with an owner-set allowance |
| Pricing model | A per-location subscription that steps up with loyalty activity. Figures on their pricing page | A flat plan price per location, indexed to local purchasing power across 36 countries. Free tier to 100 members |
| Portability | The program is part of the POS, so changing till is also a loyalty migration | Members live here. Change till, reconnect the feed, keep the balances. CSV and GDPR export on demand |
What Square Loyalty does better
The setup flow is the standard everyone else is measured against. A café owner can turn loyalty on from the Square dashboard, pick an earning rule, and have it live before the next customer. No second device, no app to download, no QR sign to tape to the till. Enrolment happens on the customer display, with a phone number, inside a flow already underway. Nothing built beside the POS is that short, because it starts one step further from the payment.
It is inside the payments system, so nothing has to be reconciled. The reward comes off the tender in the same checkout that earned it. One bill, one support number, no integration that can quietly stop syncing at 7am on a Saturday.
So: if you are all-in on Square hardware and want the least possible decision-making, Square Loyalty is hard to beat. We would rather you ran that well than ours badly.
Where we are different
It is not tied to your till
Rewardfinity connects to Square natively and to the other common tills through Zapier webhooks. Anything with an outbound webhook can drive it through our public REST API. So the day you change processor, your members and balances do not move. You reconnect a feed.
It knows who took the signup
Counter actions are attributed to the individual staff member, and that feeds a staff-facing spin wheel with an owner-set allowance.Plenty of tools suggest running a staff signup competition; far fewer ship the per-person attribution you would need to run one, which is why most of these end up tracked on a whiteboard. Our staff device setup exists because a program only enrols people if somebody asks, and asking is easier to sustain when counted.
Two smaller differences. A stamp card is a different object from a points balance, not a skin on one — the customer sees six of eight filled rather than a number to convert into value, so read points versus stamp cards before choosing either. And a hosted member card keeps progress on the phone. Google Wallet is a configured path; Apple Wallet public launch remains dark pending its physical canary.
Two pricing models
As their own pricing page described it while we wrote, Square bills loyalty as a per-location subscription that steps up as loyalty activity grows. We charge a flat plan price per location that does not move with volume, indexed to local purchasing power across 36 countries — US $29, CA$39, £24, A$45, ₹499, ₦9,900 on the Grow plan, with a free tier to 100 members. Compare the shapes, then take current figures from our pricing page and theirs.
The shape matters in one case: a busy December. Under an activity-stepped model a good month can move you up a tier. Under a flat one it cannot. How much that is worth depends on how seasonal you are.
Reward economics are identical either way. Illustrative example — not a customer result: an eight-stamp card on a $4.00 drink is $32.00 of qualifying spend, and a free drink costing $1.50 in goods makes the card a 4.7% discount. Switching vendor changes the subscription line underneath, not that number.
If you do switch
Customers hold value with you. A sloppy migration loses exactly the people the program was built to keep.
- Export the member list and balances before cancelling anything.
- Decide what one old point or visit is worth, and write it down first.
- Import by CSV, then spot-check ten members by hand against the export.
- Run both programs for a fortnight. Overlap is cheaper than a gap.
- Tell customers what changed, in one sentence, before their next visit.
- Test a refund on day one — clawback at the purchase-time rate is where migrations go wrong.
Questions people ask
What is the best Square Loyalty alternative?
It depends on why you are leaving. If the reason is cost shape, compare a flat per-location price against an activity-stepped one. If you may change POS, pick something that connects to several tills rather than living inside one. If it is stamp cards or staff incentives, find a product that ships those rather than approximating them with points.
Can I keep using Square if I switch loyalty providers?
Yes. Rewardfinity connects to Square natively, so the till, hardware and payments stay as they are and only the loyalty layer changes. That is the common case for merchants who like Square as a payments system but want a program it does not own. Clover, Lightspeed, Loyverse, Zettle and Vend run through Zapier webhooks instead.
Do I lose my loyalty members if I move off Square Loyalty?
Not if you export first. Take the member list and balances out before cancelling, decide what one old point or visit converts to, then import by CSV and check a sample by hand. The risk is rarely the data moving — it is the conversion rule being invented afterwards, once a member is already unhappy.
Does Square Loyalty do stamp cards?
Its model is points, and a points-per-visit rule behaves much like a stamp card arithmetically. The difference is what the customer sees: a balance to interpret rather than visible progress toward a milestone. Rewardfinity ships stamp cards as their own object — threshold, stamps per purchase, optional minimum spend, up to five milestones, remainder carried forward.
Can I see which employee signed up which customer?
In Rewardfinity, yes — counter actions are attributed to the individual staff member, and that feeds a staff spin wheel with an owner-set allowance. Square has a team permission controlling who may manage loyalty, which is a different thing from attributing a signup to a person. We found no per-employee attribution there; verify against their documentation.
Is Rewardfinity cheaper than Square Loyalty?
We will not answer with a number, because quoting someone else's price in our own copy is how stale claims get made. The models differ: ours is a flat plan price per location indexed to local purchasing power, theirs steps up with loyalty activity. Price both against your expected member count and monthly volume.
Try it beside your existing program.
The free tier runs to 100 members — enough to test the rule and the staff workflow without cancelling anything.