How much does a loyalty card cost: printing, subscription, rewards and time

The four cost items of a loyalty card

The cost of a loyalty card is not just the price of the cards or the subscription. There are four items to budget for, and two of them, rewards and staff time, exist with both a paper card and a card on the phone.

Before comparing quotes, write down the rule of the scheme: how many visits are needed and which reward you offer. Without the rule you cannot estimate how many rewards you will hand over, and reward cost remains the most uncertain item.

How much does it cost to print loyalty cards?

Printing loyalty cards costs from a few tens to a few hundred euros, and the price per card falls sharply with quantity: on the Italian price list of the online printer MOO, read on 18 October 2026, it ranges from 0.82 euros per card for 50 cards with rounded corners to 0.32 euros for 1,000 cards with square corners, excluding VAT. MOO’s cards are thick, double-sided and in colour.

The prices were the same as those read on 11 October 2026, and the cost per card in the table is the one MOO shows next to each quantity. With Italian VAT at 22%, 1,000 cards with square corners cost 391.62 euros. MOO is a single printer offering premium card stock; simpler formats, such as a business card used as a stamp card, can cost less. Ask for two or three quotes with the same specification: size, paper weight, front and back, corners and delivery time.

On top of printing comes a stamp with the business’s logo or initials, which makes it harder to complete the card with a stationery-shop stamp, and a reprint whenever you change the target, reward or design: cards already handed out keep the old wording.

How much does a digital loyalty card cost per month?

A digital loyalty card costs a monthly or yearly subscription that changes with customers, locations and the features included: across eight services whose pricing pages we read on 18 October 2026 (Passtastic again on 1 November, because it changed its price list), the first paid plan on monthly billing ranged from 9.90 to 29 euros a month. Five of the eight also offered a free tier with limits.

The numbers alone say little: a free tier may limit customers, active cards or operations a month, and a plan may include or leave out Wallet passes, staff accounts or messages. With 7Stamp, for example, the price is per operator login. Four of the eight pages state that prices exclude VAT; on the others VAT is not mentioned. Each service name in the table leads to our comparison with Iterum, with sources.

Wallet passes also vary from one service to another: on six of the eight pages Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are listed on the free tier or on every plan, FaveCard includes them on paid plans and the Tick Card page does not mention them.

Many services charge less on yearly billing: FaveCard gives two months free on any paid plan, 7Stamp charges 10 months out of 12, Stampioo 20% less, Passtastic 171 euros a year instead of 228 and Tick Card 59.99 euros a year. Compare services feature for feature and check prices again before signing up, because they change; a wider overview is in the guide to the best digital loyalty card apps.

How much do loyalty card rewards cost?

Rewards cost whatever you hand over, multiplied by the number of completed cards, and they are never included in the price of printing or the subscription. Customers value the reward at menu price; you pay for it at the cost of ingredients, materials and labour.

An example with hypothetical figures to replace with your own: a café offers a cappuccino after ten stamps. If a cappuccino costs the café 0.60 euros in coffee, milk and washing the cup, and 200 customers complete the card in a year, rewards cost 120 euros a year; each stamped visit costs 0.06 euros. The reward cost calculator redoes the sum with your values.

For a service the reward weighs more than for a coffee: what a men’s haircut or a car wash costs in eight Italian cities, from MIMIT prices for August 2026, is on the pages for barbershops and car washes. If receipts vary a lot, a points card ties the reward to spend: the choice is explained in stamps or points.

To choose a reward that costs little but means a lot to the customer, read the loyalty card reward ideas; to see what customers pay for a coffee in different Italian cities, there is the page on the price of coffee in Italy.

The cost that never appears on a quote: staff time

Every loyalty card asks staff for a few seconds on each visit, and a few minutes when something goes wrong. With a paper card you stamp by hand, hand out new cards, deal with forgotten or lost cards and, if you want to know how the scheme is doing, count the cards that come back. With a digital card you confirm the visit from a phone or computer and explain the QR code to people signing up.

To get an idea, a hypothetical calculation: if recording a stamp takes 10 seconds and the business records 40 a day, that is about 7 minutes a day, just under 3 hours in a month of 26 opening days. Time it yourself on a normal shift before deciding: at peak times even a few seconds count.

How to estimate the cost of a loyalty card in the first year

The most reliable way to compare paper and digital is to estimate the total cost of the first year with your own numbers, item by item. The choice between the two formats does not depend on cost alone: the full comparison, with the strengths and limits of both, is in the guide paper or digital loyalty card.

1. The card itself

   Paper: cards for one year plus one reprint. Digital: twelve monthly payments or the yearly price of the plan that fits the number of customers you expect.

2. Rewards

   Estimate how many cards will be completed and multiply by the cost of one reward. A cautious estimate is better than none.

3. Time

   Seconds per stamp multiplied by the stamps you expect, plus the time to count, reprint or explain the QR code.

4. Set-up

   Artwork, a custom stamp or printing the QR code to display, and the time to test the whole process with your staff.

How much does a loyalty card cost in the first year: an example at today’s prices

At the prices read on 18 October 2026, the first year of a paper card and of a digital one can cost similar amounts: in our hypothetical example with 200 completed cards, about 336 euros for paper and 120 to 588 euros for digital, rewards included and VAT excluded.

Paper is not always the cheapest and digital is not always the dearest: what decides it is how many cards you print, whether you stay within a free tier’s limits and which plan you need. Redo the sum with your own numbers; for reward cost alone there is the calculator.

Are there legal or administrative costs?

A loyalty card may involve obligations, and therefore costs, that depend mainly on the type of reward: a reward of the same kind as what you sell and a different gift may fall into different cases. The Italian rules are summarised in the guide to loyalty card rules in Italy; if you collect customer data, also read loyalty cards and GDPR. For your own case ask your accountant: this guide is not legal or tax advice, and outside Italy your own national rules apply.

How much does Iterum cost?

The plan prices of Iterum are published on the pricing page, excluding VAT: the new customers included each month and the active cards change, along with some programme options, while total customers are unlimited on every plan. Every plan includes Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, stamp or points cards, sign-up from the QR code, the counter app for staff, a team with no user limit, a customer list and statistics; customers download no app. The annual plan covers twelve months for the price of ten.

Iterum has no free tier: there is a 7-day free trial, you pay €0 today, a payment card is required and, unless you cancel, the selected plan continues after the trial. You can prepare the card before paying in the designer. The cost of rewards and printing the QR code to display, which you print from the dashboard, stay outside the subscription.

Sources and method

Public pages consulted on 18 October 2026: MOO, loyalty cards, prices section (Italian site); KlipCard, pricing; Quardy, home and pricing; Tick Card, home and pricing; BonusQR, price list; FaveCard, pricing; 7Stamp, pricing; Stampioo, pricing; Passtastic, pricing, re-read on 1 November 2026. Amounts are given as written on the pages, with VAT treatment where stated; prices and features may change.

The cappuccino example, the staff-time calculation and the first-year example are our own calculations with hypothetical values, not data collected from real businesses. Iterum has no relationship with the services or the printer mentioned. The information about Iterum describes the product as of 18 October 2026 and does not promise a financial return.