Plastic loyalty cards or an app on your phone: which to choose
The short answer
There are three places a loyalty card can live: plastic in your wallet, a single business's own app, or a shared card wallet on your phone. Plastic works everywhere but gets lost and carries no information. A dedicated app is only worth it for a business you visit very often. A shared wallet wins as soon as you hold more than two cards — they all sit in one place and none of them needs its own download.
The comparison
| Plastic card | A single business's app | Shared wallet (Loyalty.lt) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Space it takes | One slot each in your wallet | One app per business | One app for all of them |
| Can it be lost | Yes | No | No |
| See your point balance | Rarely | Yes | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes | Depends | Yes, codes are stored on the phone |
| Reward notifications | No | Yes | Yes |
| Discovering new places | No | No | Yes, on the partner map |
| Apple Wallet / Google Wallet | No | Rarely | Yes |
When plastic is still better
Honestly: if you hold one card and it never leaves your wallet, a digital version gains you nothing. Plastic also wins when your phone battery dies often, or when several family members share the same card.
When the phone wins
From three cards onwards the difference becomes obvious. Instead of hunting through your wallet you open one app where the card you use most is already at the top. On top of that come things plastic cannot do:
- you see your balance and history instead of guessing
- you get a notification when a reward comes within reach or a coupon is about to expire
- the card can be added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet and shown straight from the lock screen
- the map shows which places nearby take part and which of them have a live offer
What about the big retailers' own apps?
Large chains run their own apps, and their cards usually stay there. That is fine — a shared wallet is not a replacement for them. It solves a different problem: the ten smaller cards from cafés, salons, car washes and local shops that nobody will ever install ten separate apps for.
Moving your existing cards over
You scan the plastic card with your phone camera — the code and card type are recognised automatically, with no number to type. If the barcode has worn off, you enter the number yourself. There is no need to throw the plastic away: both work in parallel, because the points are recorded by the same partner's system.
What this looks like in practice is on its own page.