The advertised price of a loyalty solution is never its cost. To compare honestly, you have to add up four lines: the subscription, the set-up, the team's time, and the cost of what does not work (the customers that friction drives away). Let us go through the options.
The paper card: "free"
A few dozen euros of printing, and zero data, invisible cheating, till time at every stamp, disappointed customers at every lost card. Its cost is real, but it is hidden, which is the only discreet thing about it.
The dedicated app: the quotation
Development or white-label licence, maintenance, app store updates… and above all the cost of the graveyard: most customers will never download it. Paying dearly for a channel the customer refuses to install is the worst equation on the market.
The POS-integrated solution: the subscription plus the project
On top of the monthly subscription come the set-up, the compatibility to check, team training, and dependence on the till system. For a network with mixed POS systems, multiplying integrations can cost more than the solution itself.
Lecy: one price, all included
"No commitment" is not a sales argument, it is an alignment of interests: a solution that deploys in a day and can be cancelled in one click has only one way of keeping its customers, which is to work. That is exactly the pressure we want to be under.
That leaves the real question: what does it bring in? A loyal customer comes back more often; a flow of Google reviews moves the profile up and brings in new customers. As soon as the programme generates a few extra visits a month, it has paid for itself. Everything else is return.