Get the export before you cancel anything
Switching loyalty providers costs you customers in exactly one way: the moment somebody's stamp count goes back to zero. Everything else is logistics. So the order of operations is fixed. Export your customer list first, build the new card second, run both systems side by side for two weeks, and cancel the old subscription last.
Ask your current vendor for a CSV or Excel file with five things per customer: name, mobile number, current stamp or point balance, rewards already earned but not yet redeemed, and last visit date. That last column matters more than it looks, because it's how you tell a weekly regular from someone who tried you once in March. For reference, Waya's own customer export gives you nine columns (name, phone, program, stamps, points, tier, rewards available, rewards used, and last visit), so that's a fair benchmark for what a complete export looks like.
Some vendors hand you the file from the dashboard in one click. Others need a support ticket, and a few take days. Read your agreement before you give notice: Niqati, the best-known loyalty name in the Saudi market, sells on a quote-based subscription, so what happens to your data on termination is whatever your specific contract says. Get the file, open it, and check the row count before you cancel anything.
If the export never arrives, you're not stuck, you're just slower. Run the overlap described below and rebuild the balances at the counter instead: the customer opens their old card, your cashier reads the number off the screen, and credits the same progress on the new one. You'll recover your active regulars within two or three weeks, and those are the only ones who were coming back anyway.
Honor the stamps you find, and round up
Never convert a balance downward. If a customer had 5 stamps with your old provider, 5 stamps is the floor. A rounding error in their favor is the cheapest goodwill you will ever buy.
Card sizes rarely match, so convert by fraction of progress rather than raw count. Say the old card gave a free drink at 8 stamps and your new card rewards at 6. A customer sitting at 5 of 8 is 62.5% of the way there, and 62.5% of 6 is 3.75, so you credit 4. Someone at 7 of 8 works out to 5.25, which rounds up to a full card: give them the reward on the spot and let them start again from zero.
Rounding up has a real bill, so price it before you commit. If 60 of your 300 carried-over customers land within one stamp of a reward, and each reward costs you 12 SAR in product, generosity costs roughly 720 SAR once. That is a one-time number set against a customer base you keep. Weigh it against 60 people discovering that their stamps disappeared the week you changed systems.
Points are easier than stamps. If the redemption value hasn't changed, the number carries across one-for-one onto a points card. If the value has changed, restate the balance in rewards rather than points when you talk to customers, because people remember "two more visits" and nobody remembers "180 points". Prepaid and store-credit programs map onto a balance card instead, and discount cards cover programs that were never counting anything.
The two-week overlap, day by day
Run both systems at once for 14 days. A hard cutover creates one dead afternoon where the old app is switched off, half your staff hasn't been briefed, and nobody's stamps work. That afternoon is where the churn actually happens.
Here is the schedule that works. A week before launch, build the card, print the QR code for the counter, and walk every cashier through one live enrollment on their own phone. On day 0, start on a Sunday, the first day of the Saudi work week, so you get five full days of practice before the weekend rush. From day 1 to day 14, staff stamp both systems for anyone holding an old card. On day 14 the old system stops earning, but you keep honoring old-card redemptions for another month, and around day 45 you cancel the subscription and take the old sticker off the door.
Settle your plan before day 0. Waya's free tier stops at 100 customers and 100 wallet messages a month, and the middle of a migration is the worst possible moment to hit a wall. If the list you're carrying over is 400 names, move to Growth at 85 SAR a month (867 SAR a year) first, which covers unlimited customers and includes the Excel import. If you have 40 regulars, the free plan is genuinely enough and stays free.
Pick your fortnight deliberately. Don't overlap two systems through Ramadan evenings, when cafes and restaurants do most of a month's trade after sunset, or in the three days after payday, when the queue is too long for a cashier to explain anything twice. A slow week is worth waiting for.
The counter script for "but I already have your card"
The migration lives or dies at the register, in about fifteen seconds of talking. The mistake is asking people to sign up again. The words "sign up" and "register" sound like paperwork done for your benefit, and that second ask is what loses them.
Give staff one line to lead with: "We moved your stamps to your phone's wallet. Scan this and they're already on it, and there's no app to download." If the customer had 5 stamps, say the number out loud. Naming the balance is the part that converts, because it proves nothing was lost.
Three cases cover almost every customer. Someone with an old card gets the line above plus their balance credited then and there. Someone who never had a card gets a normal enrollment, with no history to explain. And the customer who says "I already gave you my number" gets the honest answer: the number is in the file, but the card still has to reach their phone once, and that's one screen (first name and mobile number) plus one tap to add the pass to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.
Do the enrollment while the order is being made, not while payment is happening. A barista waiting on an espresso machine has twenty spare seconds; a cashier with three people in the queue does not. If the phone is an older Android or an unusual browser, the same link opens a web version of the card, so there's no device where the answer has to be "sorry, it won't work here".
What Waya won't do for you during the move
There is no automatic migration from another loyalty provider, and anyone promising one is describing an API that neither side publishes. Waya has no POS integration and no hardware, so nothing reads your old system's database. The bridge is a spreadsheet plus your staff for two weeks. That's the honest shape of the job.
Waya also doesn't send SMS. Wallet messages arrive on the lock screen of phones that already hold your Waya pass, which on day 0 is nobody. So the announcement has to travel on channels you already own: your old provider's push notifications while that subscription is still live, your WhatsApp, your Instagram, a table tent by the register, and the counter script above.
The last piece is reciprocity, and it's the reason this article can be so specific about export columns. Waya's dashboard exports your customers back out to CSV whenever you ask, in the same nine columns listed earlier, in a file named after your shop and the date. That's exactly the courtesy you're requesting from your current vendor this week. If a different platform ever suits you better, take the file and go.
What the move costs, at August 2026 prices
Vendor-published monthly pricing in the Saudi market as of August 2026: Btaqa lists tiers at 108, 250, and 380 SAR; OneCup runs about 150 SAR; Watily is 149 SAR with loyalty bundled into a wider plan; Niqati is quote-based and remains the market leader by search share. Check each one on the vendor's own page before you decide, because prices move. These are all real products, and most of them ship wallet passes too.
Waya is 0 SAR up to 100 customers, forever, with no credit card. Growth is 85 SAR a month or 867 SAR a year for unlimited customers, up to 10 cards, 3 branches, 5 staff accounts, and 5,000 wallet messages a month. Premium is 149 SAR a month or 1,520 SAR a year for unlimited cards, branches, staff, and messages. There's no commission on sales, no per-card fee, and no setup fee.
For a migration, the number that matters isn't the monthly price, it's the entry price. Every other option on that list starts with a paid subscription, which means you commit money before you know whether the switch worked at your own counter. On Waya you can run the entire 14-day overlap on the free tier, assuming the list you're carrying is under 100 names, and start paying only once your regulars are stamping. Waya's Arabic homepage publishes 100+ shops across Saudi Arabia, 5,000+ cards living in wallets, and a 4.9 out of 5 average rated by 90 merchants; the company is backed by the AWS Startups program.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your export file before day 0, send it to [email protected] and ask what shape it needs to be in. It's a ten-minute conversation that saves a fortnight of manual typing at the till.
Frequently asked questions
Will my customers lose their stamps if I switch loyalty providers?
No, as long as you credit their existing balances onto the new card before the old system goes dark. Export your customer list with stamp and point balances from your current provider first, then either import it on a paid plan or credit each balance at the till during a two-week overlap. Convert by fraction of progress and round up: a customer at 5 of 8 stamps on the old card should get 4 of 6 on a shorter new card, not 3.
Can I import my customer list from my old loyalty app?
Yes, Excel and CSV customer import is included on Waya's paid plans, starting with Growth at 85 SAR a month. There's no direct connection to another vendor's system, so the file has to come out of your old dashboard as a spreadsheet first. On the free plan you add customers as they come in through the normal QR enrollment instead.
How long should I run both loyalty systems at the same time?
Stamp both systems for two weeks, then keep honoring rewards earned on the old card for another month. That gives your regulars several visits to move across and gives your staff time to get the counter script right. Cancel the old subscription around day 45, not day 1.
Do my customers have to sign up again on the new system?
They add the new card to their phone once, and it takes about fifteen seconds: one screen with first name and mobile number, then one tap to save the pass to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. There's no app to download, no password, and no account to create. Frame it as moving their stamps rather than signing up, and do it while their order is being made.
What if my old provider won't give me my customer data?
Rebuild the balances at the counter during the overlap instead of waiting for a file. Your cashier asks the customer to open their old card, reads the balance off the screen, and credits the same progress on the new one. You'll recover your active regulars in two or three weeks, and the dormant names in that export were unlikely to come back regardless.