Restaurant Loyalty Software in Canada: What It Costs

Restaurant loyalty software in Canada costs between about $36 and $141 a month for a single location. Over three years that's $1,280 at the low end and roughly $5,100 at the top. The range runs from a stamp card that lives in a guest's phone wallet to a full points platform wired into your POS. And here's what the price lists leave out: the software is the smallest number in a loyalty program, and most of what pushes the price up was built for a chain.

One owner on r/restaurantowners described shopping for restaurant software this summer as having trouble "finding any information that isn't just an advertisement for the company that makes said software." Fair. So here are the published prices, in Canadian dollars, with what they add up to.

How much does restaurant loyalty software cost in Canada?

It depends on which of three families you're buying from: a wallet stamp card that runs beside any POS, a loyalty add-on sold by your POS company, or a standalone platform that bundles loyalty with gift cards.

These are the prices each vendor publishes, checked on October 2, 2026. US-dollar prices are converted at the Bank of Canada rate for October 1 (1.4243). All figures are before sales tax.

Option	Published price	What it needs	Three-year cost (CAD)	The catch
Paper punch card	$20 to $50 per 500 cards	Nothing	Under $150	No guest list, no way to reach anyone
Loopy Loyalty Starter	US$25/month	Any POS, or none	About $1,280	Billed in US dollars; stamping is a separate step from the bill
Square Loyalty	$60/month up to 500 loyalty visits, then $100, then $140	Square POS	$2,160 to $3,600	The price climbs as the program grows
Stamp Me Lite	US$49/month	Any POS	About $2,510	Full activity reporting sits on the US$79 plan
DataCandy Loyalty	$125/month per location, plus a $500 implementation fee	Integrates with several Canadian POS and payment systems	$5,000	Priced for volume; gift cards are included
TouchBistro Loyalty	Quote only (review sites report US$99/month)	TouchBistro POS	About $5,080	Not offered in Quebec

A few notes on reading that table.

Square's own Canadian pricing page lists Loyalty as a separate tool "starting at $60/mo." It isn't folded into the POS plan, and there's no long-term contract.

TouchBistro no longer publishes add-on prices. Its pricing page shows a "Get a Quote" button for Loyalty, and third-party trackers still list it at US$99 a month. Its loyalty page says the product is available in Canada "excluding Québec." Lightspeed's Canadian pricing page shows plans from $89 to $499 a month and no loyalty price at all, so that one is a conversation with a rep too.

When a vendor won't print the number, ask for it in writing before the demo. You'll learn something from how long it takes to arrive.

Why does the price go up when the program works?

Because some vendors meter the exact thing you're trying to grow.

Square charges by "loyalty visit," and it counts one every time a guest enrols, earns a point or redeems a reward. Take a 40-seat bistro with 200 members who each come in about once a month. That's roughly 200 earning visits, 20 redemptions and a handful of new sign-ups: about 235 loyalty visits. First tier. $60.

Now say the program does its job. At 450 members visiting 1.2 times a month, you're at 540 earning visits before a single redemption. Second tier. $100 a month, or $480 more a year.

That isn't a reason to avoid Square Loyalty. It's a reason to estimate your tier before you sign up, using your own cover counts.

Other vendors meter different things. Loopy charges by card design and location. DataCandy charges per location plus a one-time setup. Email and text campaigns are often a separate line: Square lists email marketing from $20 a month on top of Loyalty. Ask what's included and what's counted.

What's the biggest cost in a loyalty program?

The rewards. By a wide margin.

In our break-even math for loyalty programs, the same 40-seat room hands out 20 rewards a month. If the reward is a free dessert that costs about $4 in ingredients, that's $80 a month, or $2,880 over three years. If the reward is $20 off the bill, it's $400 a month. $14,400 over three years.

Put that next to the software table. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive software is about $3,800 over three years. The gap between a dessert reward and a dollar-off reward is $11,520.

So the order of decisions matters. Pick the reward first. Then pick the cheapest tool that can deliver it without slowing down service.

What does an independent actually need from loyalty software?

Five things. Everything past this list is optional for a single room.

1. Sign-up without an app. A phone number at the till or a pass in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. The LoyalT 2025 study of 15,000 Canadians found the average person belongs to 22 loyalty programs and uses only nine regularly. Nobody is downloading a 23rd app for one bistro.
2. Earning where the bill gets paid. Either points land automatically through the POS, or your server can give a stamp in ten seconds. If it needs a second tablet at the pass, it dies on the first busy Friday.
3. A guest list you can take with you. Names, contact details, visit counts and balances, exportable as a spreadsheet. Ask to see the export button in the demo. POS-tied loyalty leaves when the POS does, which matters if you ever change POS systems.
4. Consent recorded at sign-up. Under Canada's anti-spam law, a loyalty text or email is a commercial message. You need consent, your business name and an unsubscribe in every one, and penalties run up to $10 million per violation. Good software stamps the date and the method. Our guides to guest data and privacy law and SMS marketing cover the rules.
5. One automatic nudge. A message to members who haven't been in for 60 or 90 days. That's the single automation worth paying for, because those are the guests a program can actually bring back.

And here's what you can skip:

• A branded app with your logo on it
• Tiers (silver, gold, platinum)
• Scratch-and-win games and badges
• Multi-location dashboards
• "AI-powered personalization"

None of those are bad. They're built for a group with 40 locations and a marketing department. You have one room, and you already know who sits at table 12.

Do loyalty points expire in Canada?

In Ontario and Quebec, not on a timer. This is the Canadian detail that US-made software won't flag for you.

Ontario has banned rewards points from expiring due to the passage of time alone since January 1, 2018. Quebec's rules, in force since August 1, 2019, go further: no expiry dates, and no cutting the value of points a guest has already earned.

Both provinces still allow points to lapse for inactivity. In Quebec that means at least a year without earning or redeeming, plus a notice sent 30 to 60 days before the points disappear.

Both also carve out small programs. A card that earns one specific reward named up front (the classic tenth-visit dessert) is exempt. So is a program where no single reward is worth more than $50. Most independent programs sit comfortably inside those exemptions. An open points balance that can be cashed against a $90 tasting menu may not.

The practical step: if your software has a setting that wipes points after 12 months, find out which side of that line you're on before you switch it on. Gift cards follow a different set of rules, which we cover in restaurant gift cards in Canada.

Which loyalty software fits which restaurant?

Start from what's already on your counter.

Your situation	What fits	Monthly cost
Already on Square	Square Loyalty. Estimate your loyalty visits first.	$60 to $100
On a POS that quotes loyalty by phone	A wallet stamp card beside the POS. Revisit in a year.	About $36
Selling a lot of gift cards, serving guests in French and English	DataCandy, which bundles both and supports bilingual programs	$125, plus $500 setup
Still testing whether guests care	A paper punch card	A few dollars
Full every Friday and Saturday	Nothing, or a reward that only works on Tuesdays	$0

Our position: for a single room, anything over $60 a month needs a reason you can say out loud. "It came with the demo" isn't one. "We sell $40,000 in gift cards every December and want them in the same system" is.

One operator on r/restaurateur gave the short version last month: "Reduce monthly subscriptions and focus on a good product at a great price served with a smile." Loyalty software is easy to buy and easy to forget, and it tends to join the pile we looked at in what your restaurant software actually costs.

If you haven't decided whether you want paper, digital or POS-based at all, the overview of loyalty programs for Canadian independents compares the three, and the loyalty program design guide covers stamps versus points.

What should you ask before you sign?

Seven questions. Send them by email so the answers are in writing.

• What will I pay at double my current volume?
• Is this billed in Canadian or US dollars?
• Is there a setup fee, a minimum term or a cancellation fee?
• Can I export my members and their balances? In what format?
• What happens to my members if I change POS?
• Are texts and emails included, or charged per message?
• Where is each member's consent recorded, and can I pull it up if someone complains?

A vendor that answers all seven in one reply is a vendor worth using. And if the answers are slow or vague, you've saved yourself three years of invoices.

The software keeps count. It can tell you a guest has been in nine times. It can't tell you they got engaged at table 6, or that they always ask for the corner. That part is still yours, and it's the part guests come back for.

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Sources: Square Loyalty pricing, Canada, Square Canada pricing, Loopy Loyalty pricing, Stamp Me pricing, DataCandy pricing, TouchBistro Loyalty, Lightspeed Restaurant pricing, Bank of Canada daily exchange rates, Osler on Ontario's rewards points rules, Gowling WLG on Quebec's loyalty program rules, LoyalT 2025 via Retail Insider, CRTC on Canada's anti-spam legislation.

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