Stamps suit you when your bills cluster in a narrow band and customers come often; points suit you when bill sizes vary widely. The test is practical rather than a matter of taste: open one week of sales, and if most of them sit inside a tight price band, run stamps.
The real difference: what each one rewards
The two look alike because both collect something and trade it for something, but they reward completely different behaviours. A stamp rewards turning up: you came, so you earned, whatever you paid. A point rewards spending: pay more, get more. Everything else follows from that one distinction.
Reward frequency
- A customer understands it from one sentence at the till.
- No amount to key in — one tap and your cashier is done.
- It creates a visible goal: four of six pulls people back.
- It treats a 300-riyal bill exactly like a 30-riyal one.
Fits: cafes, bakeries, barbershops, car washes.
Reward spend
- Fair to a large bill, which protects your best customers.
- Needs the amount entered every time, and that is queue time.
- Progress is slower to feel, because a balance is a number, not a bar.
- Requires you to fix what a point is worth before you launch.
Fits: restaurants, retail, pharmacies, online stores.
The one-week test
You do not need a consultant. Print an ordinary week of receipts — no season, no holiday — and look at where the values fall. If eighty per cent of them sit inside a band no wider than twenty per cent of your average bill, you are a stamps business. If they spread across a wide range, you are a points business.
| Trade | Bill range | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Speciality cafe | 16 to 26 riyals | Stamps, no hesitation |
| Family restaurant | 45 to 380 riyals | Points, no hesitation |
| Barbershop | 40 to 70 riyals | Stamps, but it is close |
The third case is the awkward one. When the range is middling, lean towards stamps: what you give up in fairness you get back in clarity, and clarity is what makes staff offer the card at all. A programme nobody offers does not work however fairly it was designed.
Cost: which is genuinely cheaper for you?
Stamps are always cheaper when the reward is an item from your own menu, because an item costs you what it costs, not what it sells for. Points run dearer because the customer spends their balance like cash in your shop, and a riyal off a bill costs you a full riyal of margin. The gap is not small:
Which is why the first answer for any undecided merchant is stamps: the cost is clearer, the pitch is easier, and the design needs no fine financial judgement. Points are the advanced move you graduate to when uneven bills become a problem you can actually name.
When people get the choice wrong
- Choosing points because they look more professional A scheme that needs three sentences of explanation at the till loses to one that needs a single sentence, however much smarter the first one looks written down.
- Choosing stamps when most of your revenue is a large, rare bill A shop selling a two-thousand-riyal appliance cannot run a stamp whose reward is another appliance, nor one whose reward is a box of accessories.
- Running both in the first month The customer will not know which they are collecting and staff will not know which to award. Pick one, run it three months, then revisit.
Common questions
Can I switch after launching?
Yes, and it is easier than it sounds, because a digital card updates itself in the customer's phone with nothing for them to do. But switch once, announce it plainly, and honour the balances people built before the change. A programme that mutates every couple of months loses trust faster than a badly chosen one.
What if I sell a service rather than a product?
A fixed-price service — a haircut, a wash, a session — behaves exactly like a fixed-price item, so stamps fit. A service whose price moves with scope, such as a repair shop or a clinic, is fairer on points, because one appointment can be worth twenty times another.
Which brings in more new customers?
Neither. Both work on people who already came through your door, and that is their job. Bringing new people in is the work of your marketing, your location and your product. Confusing the two is the commonest reason reward programmes disappoint in their first year.