How to set up a points card in Waya and decide what a point is worth

A points card is one number you set and one rule you enforce

In Waya, a points card has exactly one number you configure: the reward threshold, meaning how many points buy one reward. The default is 100 and the field accepts anything from 1 up to 100,000. You set it in the card designer, right next to the reward wording, and it is the only piece of the earn-and-burn math that lives inside the software.

The earn rate is not in the software. Waya has no POS integration and no till hardware, so nothing in the system reads the bill. After scanning the customer's pass, your cashier types a whole number of points into the phone and taps + Point. Whatever rule you pick lives on a sticker by the register and in your staff's memory, not in a settings screen.

Two mechanical limits shape everything below. Points are whole numbers: the field floors decimals and refuses anything under 1, so 4.5 points becomes 4 and 0.5 points is rejected. Points cards also sit on the paid plans, Growth at 85 SAR a month or Premium at 149 SAR a month. The Free plan gives you one stamp card, not a points card.

Price a point backwards from the reward

Start with what you are giving away, not with the points. Say the reward is a drink you sell for 18 SAR. Decide the share of spend you can afford to hand back, then work the numbers from there. Around 5% is a common figure in food and drink, but calculate yours from your own margin rather than borrowing ours.

The arithmetic then runs in one direction. To hand back 18 SAR at a 5% giveback, the customer has to spend 360 SAR, because 18 divided by 0.05 is 360. If one point equals one riyal spent, the threshold is 360 points. Round it to something a human remembers, like 350, and accept that the rounding nudges your giveback up to about 5.1%.

The earn rate then decides how large the numbers your cashier types will be. At one point per riyal, the threshold is 350 and a 45 SAR bill means typing 45. At one point per 5 SAR the threshold is 70 and the cashier types 9. At one point per 10 SAR the threshold is 35 and the cashier types 4. All three hand back the same value; they differ only in keystrokes.

Coarse rates quietly cost the customer money. At one point per 10 SAR, a 45 SAR bill floors to 4 points instead of 4.5, so the customer loses about 11% of what that visit earned. One point per riyal has no rounding loss at all, which is why it is the safest default even though it means typing three digits at busy hours.

What happens the moment the threshold is crossed

Waya does not reset the counter to zero when a reward is earned. It divides. When the total reaches or passes the threshold, Waya files as many rewards as fit and leaves the remainder on the card, so nobody loses the extra points they paid for.

With a 350-point threshold, a customer sitting at 330 who earns 60 points lands on 390. Waya credits one reward and leaves 40 points on the card toward the next one. If a cashier types 900 onto an empty card, that customer gets two rewards and keeps 200 points.

Earned rewards sit as a balance on the pass until a cashier taps Redeem, which spends one reward at a time. Points can never go below zero. The deduct button removes exactly one point per tap, so an accidental 500 is slow to walk back, which is another argument for keeping the typed numbers small.

Each add carries an idempotency key, so a cashier who taps twice on a weak connection does not credit the same purchase twice. What no system can catch is the wrong number typed confidently, so make the rule simple enough that the wrong number is rare.

Switching a live stamp card to points without wiping progress

Stamps and points are separate counters on the same pass. Changing the card type from stamp to points deletes nothing, and the old stamp count stays in its own field. But the card stops displaying stamps and stops counting them toward any reward, so a regular sitting at 7 of 10 stamps effectively restarts at 0 points unless you credit the difference.

Do it in this order. First, read the current counts while they are still visible; each customer's profile in the dashboard shows the progress on their card. Second, work out the conversion so nobody loses ground: divide the new threshold by the old stamps required. A 10-stamp card becoming a 350-point card makes one stamp worth 35 points, so the 7-stamp regular is owed 245.

Third, change the type, set the threshold, and save. Fourth, credit each existing card by scanning it once and typing its converted number. There is no bulk convert button in Waya. For 40 active cards that is one quiet afternoon at the counter; for 800 cards it is not a plan.

Above a few hundred active cards, the calmer route is to leave the stamp card running and publish the points card beside it. Growth allows up to 10 cards, so both live in one dashboard, and the stamp card drains on its own as people collect their last reward. Send one wallet message explaining the change so nobody discovers it at the register.

When a points card is the wrong tool

Points earn their keep when your bills vary. A restaurant check swings from 25 SAR to 300 SAR, and a stamp per visit rewards the small order exactly as much as the large one. Points scale the reward to the spend, which is fairer to your best customers and cheaper for you.

When every visit costs roughly the same, points add work and return nothing. A car wash at 30 SAR, a haircut at 50 SAR, a flat white at 16 SAR: the bill is the bill. A stamp card means one tap, no number to type, no rounding to defend, and no earn rate to explain to a new hire. It also costs 0 SAR on the Free plan, up to 100 customers and 100 wallet messages a month.

Here is a workable test. If you cannot state your points rule in one sentence that a tired cashier will still apply correctly at 11pm, the rule is too complicated. "One point per riyal, 350 points for a free drink" passes that test. "One point per riyal, double on Tuesdays, triple on desserts" does not.