Comparison

Wivly vs paper punch cards

Paper is the incumbent in this category and it is genuinely good at some things. It is also the version of loyalty that cannot tell you whether it works, which is the whole reason anyone moves off it.

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Last checked 1 August 2026. Category descriptions reflect how these tools generally work, not any single vendor.

	Wivly	Paper punch card
Cost to start	Free plan; a printed QR poster	A stack of cards and a rubber stamp	Them
Works with no power or signal	Scanner queues offline, but the customer needs a phone	Always	Them
Customers with no smartphone	Cannot join	Works for everyone	Them
Time to hand out	About 5 seconds to scan and add	About 2 seconds to hand over a card	Them
Cards lost by customers	Lives in the wallet; recoverable by email	Common, and gone for good	Wivly
Forgery	Server-side balance, nothing to copy	A matching stamp costs a few euros	Wivly
Knowing how many members you have	Exact, live	Unknowable	Wivly
Seeing who stopped coming	A list, updated daily	Not possible	Wivly
Reaching a customer between visits	Lock-screen message, no phone number needed	Not possible	Wivly
Knowing what the program costs you	Reward cost and repeat rate in the dashboard	Guesswork	Wivly

When paper is the better choice

A meaningful share of your customers do not carry a smartphone, or would not want to use one at your counter.
You run one small shop, you already know your regulars by name, and you have no intention of measuring anything. Paper is not a compromise here; it is proportionate.
You want something running by lunchtime with no decisions. A stamp and a stack of cards is genuinely faster than any software.

When Wivly is the better choice

You want to know whether the program is working. This is the single largest difference: paper cannot answer it at all.
You want to reach a regular who has drifted, without collecting phone numbers or building an email list.
You have more than one location, or plan to. Paper does not travel between sites, and a customer's card at one shop means nothing at the other.

Questions

Can I run both while I switch?+

Yes, and most people do for a few weeks. Honour existing paper cards until they are finished and issue the digital card to everyone new. There is no migration to perform.

What about customers who prefer paper?+

Keep a small stack. A loyalty program that refuses a customer is worse than a slightly inconsistent one, and the number of people who insist is usually small.

Is a phone really faster at the counter?+

Handing over a card is faster. Scanning is about the same as finding a card in a wallet, and much faster than reissuing a lost one. The time saved is in everything after the stamp.

Also compare

Wivly vs a branded loyalty app

Wallet passes against a downloadable app: the install problem, what an app can do that a pass cannot, and which businesses should build one anyway.

See the comparison →

Wivly vs loyalty built into your till

Loyalty bundled with your point-of-sale against a standalone wallet program: what integration buys you, what it costs you, and when the bundle wins.

See the comparison →

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