Phone number vs QR code: the most inclusive way to run loyalty

Every digital loyalty scheme has a group of customers it quietly excludes, and they are rarely the customers the people designing it have in mind.

The elderly regular who has a phone for calls. The teenager who has run out of data. The person whose phone is in a bag at the back of a pushchair with a queue behind them. The customer whose screen is cracked across the camera. None of these are edge cases in a café or a parlour. They are Tuesday.

Three ways in, not one

A scheme is inclusive when there is more than one path to the same card. Three cover almost everybody.

1. Scan the QR

The default, and the fastest. Point the camera, land on the join page, name and number, done. Works for the large majority.

2. Staff enter the number

For the customer without a usable phone at that moment. Staff take a name and a mobile number on the shop device and the card is created. The customer does not have to touch anything, and their stamps accumulate. They can pick the card up later from the link, or never, and still get their free coffee when staff look them up by the last four digits of their number.

This path matters more than it appears. It is what makes the scheme work for somebody who has no smartphone at all.

3. Read out a code

For the customer whose card is open but whose camera is awkward, or where the staff device cannot be pointed across the counter. The till shows four characters, the customer types them into their card, and the stamp lands.

This is also the accessibility path. A code that can be read aloud works for somebody who cannot line up a camera, which a scan-only system does not.

Why phone number, not email

If you only take one identifier, take the mobile number, and there are two practical reasons.

First, it is the one staff can use to find somebody at the counter. "Last four digits?" is a fast, natural question and people know their own number. Nobody reliably spells an email address across a counter with a coffee machine running.

Second, it is stable. People change email addresses when they change jobs; they keep mobile numbers for decades.

Ask for the email as an optional extra, because that is what your automations run on, but never make it the thing the card is identified by.

Design details that decide who is included

• Never require a smartphone to redeem. If a customer needs to show a screen to claim their reward, the staff-assisted path was decorative. Staff should be able to look someone up and redeem for them.
• Use an unambiguous code alphabet. No O against 0, no I against 1. A code read out across a noisy counter has to survive being misheard once.
• Keep codes to letters and digits. Symbols look more secure and force a keyboard switch on a phone, which is exactly the friction the scheme exists to remove.
• Make the number field forgiving. 07700 900123, +447700900123 and 44 7700 900123 are the same person. The system should know that, not the customer.
• Do not gate anything behind an account. No password, no verification email. The card link is the credential.

The consent question

One thing worth being firm about: when staff create a card on somebody's behalf, that is not consent to email them. It cannot be. Consent has to come from the person, which means a staff-assisted card should start with messaging switched off, and the customer turns it on from their own card if they want it.

It costs you a few subscribers. It is also the only defensible reading of the rules, and it keeps your list clean of people who never agreed to be on it.

The test of an inclusive scheme is simple: can the customer who has no smartphone still fill a card and get their free coffee?

If the answer is no, the scheme has decided that some of your regulars do not count.