What geofence radius should a car wash use around its branch?

Start at the 150 m default, then adjust for your street layout

Waya's geofence range runs from 50 to 500 meters, with 150 meters as the default, and 150 m is a sound starting point for most single-branch car washes on a normal city street — close enough that the message still feels relevant to "right now," far enough to catch a driver a block or two before they'd have to decide to turn in.

The right number depends on your specific location, not a fixed rule. A wash on a wide arterial road where traffic moves fast benefits from a slightly larger radius, closer to 250–300 m, so the notification has time to register before the driver passes the turn-in point. A wash tucked into a dense side-street cluster with several competing shops nearby should stay closer to the 100–150 m default, so the message doesn't fire while the driver is still three blocks away and mentally elsewhere.

Geofence is set from the Branches screen in the dashboard, separately from the branch's street address — a common setup mistake is assuming the address text itself creates the geofence, when it doesn't. It's Apple Wallet only, works for up to 10 branch locations per card, and costs zero message quota regardless of the radius chosen.

The mechanic recommendation: match radius to road speed, not to guesswork

Think in terms of reaction time, not distance. A driver on a fast arterial road covers 300 meters in under 15 seconds at typical city speeds, which doesn't leave much room to notice a lock-screen message and decide to turn in — a larger radius compensates by firing the message earlier. A driver on a slow, narrow side street covers the same distance in closer to a minute, so a tighter 100–150 m radius still gives enough warning without firing so early that the message feels disconnected from the moment.

If your wash sits at a busy intersection with several routes converging, consider the largest end of the range, closer to 400–500 m, since drivers may be approaching from multiple directions and speeds, and a wider net catches more of them before they've already chosen a lane past your entrance.

• Fast arterial road → larger radius, closer to 250–500 m
• Slow, narrow side street → default 150 m or slightly less
• Busy multi-route intersection → widest end of the range, up to 500 m
• Dense cluster of competing shops nearby → keep it tight so the message stays relevant

The limitation, stated honestly: it's Apple Wallet only, and there's no delivery report

Geofence works only on Apple Wallet — Google Wallet decides its own proximity trigger, which Waya doesn't control or replicate for Android customers. There's also no delivery report for geofence messages specifically, unlike regular wallet-lock-screen sends, so you can't see exactly how many times a given geofence message fired.

That means radius tuning is somewhat trial-and-error: test a radius for a few weeks, watch whether stamp activity ticks up around the times a geofence message would plausibly have fired, and adjust from there rather than expecting a precise before-and-after report.

A worked comparison across three branch types

The table below suggests a starting radius for three common car wash locations, to adjust from once you see real behavior.

Setting the radius in the dashboard

Set the radius from the Branches screen, not the address field, and remember it's a Growth+ setting — the geofence settings screen itself isn't available on Free. Once set, it applies per branch, so a multi-branch wash on a busy road and a quiet side street can each get a different radius rather than one blanket setting for the whole account.

There's nothing else to configure — no hardware, no beacon, no app for the customer to install. The geofence rides entirely on the wallet pass already sitting in the customer's Apple Wallet from enrollment.

1. Step 1: open the Branches screen

   Find the branch you want to configure — geofence is set per branch, not account-wide.

2. Step 2: set the radius separately from the address

   Enter a value between 50 and 500 meters; don't assume the street address field creates the geofence on its own.

3. Step 3: start near the 150 m default

   Adjust up for a fast arterial road or busy intersection, down for a quiet side street.

4. Step 4: watch stamp activity for a few weeks

   Since there's no delivery report, judge the radius by trends in visits rather than a message count.

Where geofence fits in the rest of your loyalty setup

Geofence is one piece of a larger notification setup that also includes the welcome, stamp, reward, and win-back triggers, plus scheduled campaigns — see the full launch plan for how they all fit together in a single-branch launch.

Waya has no POS or till integration regardless of geofence radius — a stamp still requires a staff member scanning the customer's card on a phone — and there's no SMS channel, so geofence and every other message rely entirely on the wallet pass already in the customer's phone.