Stay remembered. Get chosen again. Grow local spend.
Through our partnership with SumUp, we can offer local retailers a card-linked loyalty programme that keeps you visible between purchases, prompts the next visit, and makes regulars feel valued. It works best for businesses with genuine repeat trade and an owner willing to make enrolment part of the daily interaction with customers — not a passive add-on.
The local retail challenge
Local retail survives on habit. A regular customer who chooses your shop over a supermarket or an online alternative is worth considerably more than the sum of their transactions — they require no acquisition cost and arrive by instinct.
The threat is not usually competition on price. It is the slow erosion of habit. A customer who forgets, drifts, or starts ordering online is effectively lost without you knowing it.
SumUp Loyalty gives local retailers a lightweight way to stay visible between purchases, reward the customers who matter most, and bring back those who have quietly drifted.
What SumUp Loyalty does for local retail
Stay top of mind locally
For local retail, the competition is proximity. A loyalty mechanic that surfaces your business in the Local app gives you a visibility edge without paid advertising.
Bring back lapsed customers
AutoPilot identifies customers who used to visit and have not returned. A well-timed offer gives them a reason to choose you again.
Time promotions to occasions
Seasonal moments — Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas — are natural gifting triggers for florists, food shops, and specialist retailers. A timed promotion lands at exactly the right moment.
Grow the basket over time
Points that accumulate over repeat visits naturally encourage slightly higher-value purchases when customers are close to a reward.
Reward the locals who sustain you
Your most valuable customers are the ones who buy from you regularly rather than ordering online or choosing a competitor. Loyalty gives them a visible reason to stay local.
Points or stamps — choose the one that fits how your customers spend
Available to our merchants through our SumUp partnership, this loyalty programme gives you two reward mechanics. Use the one that matches your transaction pattern.
Stamp card
One stamp per transaction. Simple, visible, and easy for customers to track. Best where transaction amounts are consistent and visit frequency is the main driver.
Good for: cafés, barbers, fast food, newsstands, food trucks.
Points-based loyalty
Points accumulate with spend. Customers who spend more earn more. Best where basket size varies meaningfully between visits.
Good for: spas, restaurants, grocers, florists, alcohol retailers.
Important: switching between stamps and points resets your customers' progress. Choose at the start and stay consistent.
Promotions — targeted, timed, and effort-free
Manual promotions let you run time-limited offers to enrolled loyalty customers. You choose the window, the offer, and the audience. The system handles the rest.
Quiet periods
A slow Tuesday evening or a mid-afternoon dip can be addressed directly with a timed offer.
Seasonal pushes
Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Black Friday — a promotion timed to a trading moment turns passive interest into a visit.
New launches
Introduce a new product, service, or location with an offer that gives existing customers a reason to come in and try it.
Tactical trading windows
A promotion during a specific date range or time of day, targeting only enrolled loyalty customers.
Promotion reach depends on the number of enrolled customers who have the SumUp Local app and have opted in to receive offers.
AutoPilot — retention without the admin
AutoPilot runs five campaign types automatically based on customer behaviour. You configure them once. The system identifies the right customers and sends the right message at the right time — without any ongoing effort from you.
Sign-up reward
A welcome offer when a new customer joins — an immediate reason to use the account from day one.
At-risk prompt
Sent when a customer breaks their usual visit pattern, before they fully lapse.
Lapsed customer offer
An offer to customers who have not visited in a defined period — a prompt to come back.
Lost customer win-back
A stronger offer for customers who have been absent longest — the last prompt before they're gone.
Birthday campaign
An offer timed to a customer's birthday. Tends to land well.
AutoPilot handles the follow-up automatically once it is configured. The part that requires your involvement is the initial setup and making sure your team consistently prompts customers to join at the point of sale. The system works in proportion to the enrolled customer base you build.
How it works in practice
Realistic merchant scenarios — not fabricated claims.
Seasonal and birthday timing
A local florist had strong Valentine's Day and Mother's Day trade but found that customers who bought for those occasions rarely came back until the next one. The relationship existed but had no follow-through.
What changed
AutoPilot birthday campaigns prompted customers near their own birthday to visit. Seasonal promotions sent ahead of key dates brought back customers who had not visited since the previous year.
Weekly spend reinforcement
A neighbourhood grocer competed directly with supermarket convenience stores nearby. Price was not always the differentiator — convenience and habit were.
What changed
A simple points reward for every purchase gave regulars a reason to maintain the habit. The points accumulated across weekly shops and created a visible benefit that the supermarket did not offer locally.
Light repeat mechanic for small baskets
A newsstand with regular morning customers had baskets averaging under £5 but high transaction frequency. A standard loyalty scheme did not feel proportionate.
What changed
A lightweight stamp mechanic — every ten visits earns a reward — gave regulars a reason to be consistent without feeling like the scheme was complicated or high-effort.
Tactical promotions before key trading windows
A neighbourhood off-licence had predictably strong trade around bank holidays and sporting events but found the weeks in between were slow.
What changed
A timed promotion during quieter weeks — run responsibly — shifted some spend into lower periods. The promotion was limited to enrolled loyalty members only.
Not just a stamp card — shared local infrastructure.
Most loyalty systems are isolated. A merchant sets up their own scheme, pushes their own app, and carries the entire adoption burden alone. Most customers do not bother.
The loyalty system available through our SumUp partnership works differently. Customers download one app and link one card. After that, joining any participating merchant's loyalty scheme is a single tap. The friction is gone once — not once per merchant.
Generic loyalty scheme
- One merchant, one isolated programme
- One isolated push for every new customer
- Customer downloads a separate app for each scheme
- No shared momentum between merchants
SumUp Loyalty model
- One shared app, one card-linking step
- Multiple participating merchants, one entry point
- Repeated visibility across a local merchant cluster
- In shared venues, each new merchant reduces the barrier for the next
This advantage is most visible in food halls, markets, and dense local merchant clusters — where customers interact with multiple merchants in the same space and the app becomes familiar quickly. It matters less for isolated, standalone businesses where the network effect does not apply.
Who this is strongest for
Strong fit
- Florists — especially for gifting and seasonal occasion timing
- Grocers and food retailers with regular local customers
- Newsstands and convenience retailers with high visit frequency
- Neighbourhood alcohol retailers using targeted, responsible promotions
- Owners who will actively prompt customers to enrol — the programme scales with how consistently it is offered at the till
Weaker fit
- Galleries and art dealers — purchase frequency is too low for meaningful visit uplift
- General apparel where customers buy infrequently and seasonally
- Retail without genuine local repeat behaviour — one-off or tourist-led trade
- Businesses where the owner prefers a hands-off approach — this programme rewards active operators, not passive ones