Create a loyalty programme

About creating a loyalty programme

Loyalty programmes allow you to encourage customers to continue to shop or use the services of your business. Typically, these programmes offer rewards, discounts, or special perks to customers who frequently make purchases or engage with your business.

With Square Loyalty, you can create a loyalty programme that keeps track of customer points as they shop with you and offer discount rewards. Your customers can sign up quickly and easily by entering their mobile number right in the register, when submitting an invoice payment, or online when completing a purchase – and earn rewards no matter how they pay.

Before you begin

You can only create your loyalty programme from Square Dashboard. There are three main tasks when creating your loyalty programme:

• Defining terminology: You can customise the terminology of your loyalty programme to fit your brand. For example, customers can earn loyalty stars or points.

• Choose how customers earn a point: You can customise your programme type and purchase requirements to decide how customers can earn points. For example, you can have your customers earn points by the amount they spend, what items they purchase, or how often they visit.

• Choose customer rewards: You can decide how to reward your customers once they get enough loyalty points. For example, you can give them a discount on the entire sale, a discount on a specific item or item category, or a free item.

Create a Square Loyalty programme

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Click Get Started.

3. Complete each step to create your loyalty programme.

Create a multi-reward loyalty programme

You can create a multi-reward loyalty programme by adding multiple types of rewards in your setup. Customers will accumulate points towards rewards based on different tiers. Customers can choose to redeem their points for a reward once they reach a tier, or continue toward the next tier to receive a larger reward. This allows you to create a loyalty programme unique to your business and incentivise your customers to return.

If you are setting up a loyalty programme for the first time:

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Follow the steps to create your loyalty programme.

To add tiers to your loyalty programme:

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Click Settings > Add a new reward.

3. Select your reward type from the dropdown and choose the reward value.

4. Enter the discount that will be applied for the reward.

5. Click Create reward.

You can create up to 15 rewards for your loyalty programme. If you already have 15 rewards created, you'll need to delete an existing reward in order to create any new rewards for your programme. Additionally, reward names must be 100 characters or less for ease of use across your Point of Sale and receipts and during enrolment for buyers.

Exempt items from accruing points

If you set up a spend-based loyalty programme, you can exclude certain items or categories from accruing points.

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Click Settings.

3. Click Edit next to the Eligible items and categories section. Use the filter or search bar to locate items and deselect any items you want to prevent from accruing points. Any items that are uncategorised will be located at the bottom of this list.

4. Click Done.

If you exclude a category, then any new items you create in that category will automatically be excluded from accruing points as well.

The option to exclude items from accruing points is only available for spend-based loyalty programmes and is not available for visit-based, item-based, or category-based programmes.

Customise loyalty programme terminology

You are able to customise the terminology of your loyalty programme to fit your businesses' brand. Instead of your customer's earning points, you can choose to call them anything you want.

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Click Settings.

3. Under Terminology, click Edit and enter your preferred term > Save.

Reward names can be up to 100 characters in length. However, we recommend to keep reward names around 50 characters or less for better display options across different platforms, like your point of sale and receipts, and during the enrolment process for customers.

Add and view points expiration date

Add points expiration date

You can set an expiration date for your issued loyalty points in order to help incentivise your customers to come back sooner. At the end of creating your loyalty programme, you will have the chance to review and change your loyalty programme type and points expiration settings.

You can add points expiration when you create your loyalty programme and from your Square Dashboard after you create your programme.

1. Sign in to Square Dashboard, and go to Loyalty.

2. Click Settings.

3. Under Earning Points, click Edit next to Expiry and set when you'd like your points to expire, or select Never if you'd rather not set an expiration date.

4. Click Continue.

You can choose to expire points after a set number of months. Customers will receive an SMS notification 14 days before their points expire.

View points expiration date

You can view the points expiration date for specific customers enrolled in your loyalty programme.

Set up locations

Select which locations you would like to participate during programme setup. Your customers will be able to earn points and redeem rewards at any of your participating locations.

To create additional locations, visit Locations in Square Dashboard and click Create Location. Once you add a new location, you cannot delete locations, but you can deactivate a location at any time. Inactive accounts will still be visible and can be reactivated at any time.

If you'd like to offer a free item as a loyalty reward, you must select an item or category from each location's Item Library in the reward field. This must be done to ensure coupons are redeemable across all business locations. Your customers won't be able to redeem coupons at any locations that don't have an item selected.

Related articles

• Enrol customers in your loyalty programme

• Apply loyalty rewards to a sale

• Create loyalty promotions

• Edit loyalty programmes