Three machines, not one loyalty card
Starbucks Rewards looks like a stamp card with a bigger budget. It isn't. Underneath it are three separate machines that happen to share one screen: a prepaid balance the customer funds before drinking anything, a points currency whose exchange rate the company controls, and an app that is also the cash register.
The prepaid balance is the part most people miss. When a customer loads money before ordering, the company holds cash it hasn't earned yet, and the customer has quietly pre-decided where tomorrow's coffee comes from. The points sit on top and can be retuned whenever the terms change, because a "Star" means whatever this year's rules say it means.
The third machine is what makes the famous personalization possible. Because the app takes the order and the payment, every cup lands in the database attached to a named person, with the item, the size, the store, and the hour. That is the raw material behind the offers people talk about, and it is the one part a shop with an ordinary till cannot reproduce.
This describes the program's structure as publicly documented in August 2026. Earn rates, tier names, and redemption thresholds differ by country and change often, so read the program terms for your own market before you quote a number to anyone.
Copy this: take the money before you pour the coffee
The prepaid balance is the copyable half of the engine, and none of it needs 30,000 stores. You sell credit at a small discount, the credit lives in the customer's wallet, and your cashier deducts from it by scanning the pass.
Here is the math with the assumptions written out. Assume a café at 18 SAR a flat white, and 25 regulars who buy 200 SAR of credit for 180 SAR. That is 4,500 SAR in the till on launch day against 5,000 SAR of drinks you now owe, so the discount costs 500 SAR spread over about 277 cups, or roughly 1.80 SAR a cup. A "buy 9, get the 10th free" card costs you the same 10% and brings in no cash and no commitment.
Two warnings before you try it. Prepaid credit is money you owe in coffee, not profit, so agree with your accountant on how you record it before you sell the first one. And a slice of every balance never gets spent, which is real income for a giant and a bad thing to plan around in a shop where the forgetful customer walks past your window every morning.
On Waya this is a balance card. There is no POS integration and no hardware: your cashier scans the customer's Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass on an ordinary phone and the balance drops, while the sale still rings through whatever till you already use. Balance cards need the Growth plan at 85 SAR a month, because the free plan includes one stamp card only.
Copy this: one message a week to the people who stopped coming
The second copyable idea is the personalized offer, stripped down to the only part that works without a data team. A giant runs a model that predicts a drop in visit frequency. You read a short list of names that used to come every week and haven't come in a month.
Be honest about what your data actually is. A loyalty pass scanned beside the till gives you identity and frequency: who this person is, how often they come, and when they stopped. It does not give you the basket, because the order goes through your till and not through the card. So copy the frequency play, and skip anything that depends on knowing they always order an oat cortado.
Worked example, assumptions first. Say 40 of your customers are enrolled and 12 haven't been in for 30 days. You send those 12 one wallet message and 3 come back this week: at 18 SAR that is 54 SAR, which isn't the point. The point is that 3 people re-entered a weekly habit that was already dying, and you'll see whether it repeats in your own dashboard rather than in somebody's case study.
The message arrives as a wallet notification on the phone's lock screen. No SMS is involved and no phone number is handed to a messaging app, which also means you cannot reach anyone who has notifications switched off. The free plan caps you at 100 messages a month, which for a shop under 100 customers is about one message to everyone every three weeks.
Ignore these six
First, tiers. Green and Gold work because they sort millions of people into groups big enough to behave differently; splitting 180 enrolled customers into two tiers creates two groups nobody notices and one more rule your cashier explains at 8am. Second, the abstract points currency. Its job is margin control across thousands of products in dozens of countries, and you would be trading away the fact that "8 stamps, the 9th is free" is understood in three seconds at a counter.
Third, your own consumer app. A giant can ask for a download because it has television money and a store on every corner; a one-branch café asking for an install at the register loses most of the queue, which is the whole reason wallet passes exist. Fourth, order-ahead. It re-plumbs your kitchen and splits your queue, and it needs a second barista long before it needs software.
Fifth, co-branded credit cards and national partner networks. Those need a bank, a legal team, and a partner who wants your traffic. Sixth, breakage as a line in the plan, along with the "collect three bonus stars this week" game mechanics that usually sit beside it. Both need volume to test properly, and one of them only pays when your customer loses track of their own money.
Notice what the six have in common. Every one buys a small percentage improvement on an enormous base. At one shop the enormous base doesn't exist, and the machinery gets paid for in cashier attention, which is the scarcest thing behind your counter.
What the copyable half costs
Waya is 0 SAR forever up to 100 customers and 100 messages a month, with one stamp card, one branch, your own card design, and the full dashboard, with no credit card required. Growth is 85 SAR a month (867 SAR a year) and adds unlimited customers, up to 10 cards, 3 branches, 5 staff accounts, 5,000 messages a month, all card types including balance, Excel import, and campaigns. Premium is 149 SAR a month (1,520 SAR a year) with unlimited cards, branches, staff, and messages.
The Saudi market has real alternatives, and it is worth pricing them yourself. As of August 2026, Btaqa publishes tiers at 108, 250, and 380 SAR a month; OneCup is around 150 SAR a month; Watily is 149 SAR a month with loyalty bundled into a wider plan; and Niqati, the best-known name here and the leader by search share, quotes per shop instead of publishing a price. Most of them ship wallet passes too, and several have been doing this longer than we have.
The one structural difference is where you start. All of those begin with a paid subscription, so a café testing whether any of this works has to buy software before it learns anything. Waya starts at zero and stays there to 100 customers, which is enough to run the win-back experiment above before you pay for the prepay experiment. Vendor prices move, so check each page before you decide.
Setting up the free version takes an afternoon: start on the free plan, design the card in your own colors, and print one QR code for the counter. More English guides, including the wallet-pass mechanics and the retention math, sit on the English index.
Frequently asked questions
Can a single café run a prepaid balance card like Starbucks does?
Yes. You can sell prepaid credit that lives in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, and your cashier deducts from it by scanning the customer's pass on an ordinary phone. On Waya that needs the Growth plan at 85 SAR a month, because the free plan includes one stamp card only. Prepaid credit is a liability until it is drunk, so settle the bookkeeping with your accountant before you sell the first one.
Should I use points or stamps at one shop?
Stamps, in almost every case. Starbucks uses an abstract points currency because it needs to tune margins across thousands of products in dozens of countries, and that flexibility costs clarity. One café sells maybe 30 things, and "8 stamps, the 9th is free" is understood at the counter in three seconds without your cashier explaining a conversion rate.
Do my customers need to download an app?
No. They scan your QR code, type a first name and mobile number on one screen, and tap once to add the card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, with a web card as the fallback on any other device. There is no account and no password. That is the single biggest advantage a small shop's program has over a giant's, because the download request is where most enrollments die.
What happens after 100 customers on the free plan?
Enrollment stops at 100 customers and 100 wallet messages a month, and already-enrolled customers keep their cards and keep collecting. Nothing is deleted and no card stops working. To go past the cap you move to Growth at 85 SAR a month for unlimited customers and 5,000 messages, and no credit card is needed to stay on Free indefinitely.
Can I see what each customer buys, like the big programs do?
No, and it is worth knowing why. A loyalty pass scanned beside your till records identity and frequency — who came, how often, and when they stopped — but the basket goes through your till, not through the card, so item-level data never reaches the loyalty program. Copy the frequency plays that work with that data and ignore the product-recommendation plays that don't.