Imagine if small merchants could 2X their loyalty consumer base by changing one simple thing to their checkout flow
Merchants value easy, best-in-class, and affordable solutions that streamline their workflow
See portable hand-held device for service at the table, POS integration for payments at the counter, and stand-alone loyalty solution for cash businesses below.
Move rewards ahead of every payment transaction
When a customer pays with their credit card and signs up for our loyalty program, we can securely tokenize their credit card information to track their spending behaviors.
Our CRM offers merchant’s consumer purchasing behavior insights (ie. lifetime customer spend, promotion-driven revenue, quality of promotions, favorite customer products).
We theorized that we could bring in more revenue for our merchants if we offered a loyalty reward before every transaction.
Early experiments showed an increase of 2-4x customer sign-ups depending on merchant verticals.
Tying loyalty to every credit card swipe requires vigilant vetting as we enter into the payments arena
Understanding our merchant through user and market research:
Concept testing
Usability testing
Merchant, accountant, cashier interviews
Product market analysis
NPS tracking
Competitor analysis
Ethnographies
Discovering our Loyalty + Payments MVP
Understanding small business POS fragmentation, we learned that our largest market opportunity would be to build a Loyalty + Payments experience that prioritizes Windows and Clover POS. We began designing our core loyalty program flows (new member, returning member, membership opt-out, paying with card, card, and refund).
Stress testing core MVP Loyalty + Payment flows
We invited Fivestars merchants and cashiers in-house to test our Loyalty + Payment flows. We built Figma prototypes and displayed them on lo-fi hardware designs to simulate a quasi-realistic checkout experience for early user testing.
Point of Sale + cPay (customer payment screen)
Flows between merchant and customer moving through the checkout flow on the payment devices.
Early hardware prototype
Merchant Key Learnings
Merchants offer more than percentage-based rewards (i.e. free cookie, free sticker) and need a moment before redemption to check their inventory
Cashiers expect that the percentage discounts are automatically applied to the total. Due to integration limitations, cashiers must be alerted when a discount must be applied to their total.
Merchants do not require a signature
Customer Key Learnings
Customers feel more comfortable with entering their phone number vs. swiping their card to sign up or sign into their loyalty program
Customer attention drops significantly after the payment screen.
Fivestars’ MMP Loyalty + Payments
POS integration install
Kirk’s Steakburgers, Palo Alto, CA 2018
Fivestars merchants offered us invaluable insights for MMP launch. We discovered opportunities to reduce friction in our sales pitch, merchant onboarding experience, cashier training, and customer support experience.
This was my first patented technology. Huge shout out to Michael Hsu, Patrick Lucas, Andre Prudhomme, Claudia Wong, and Chase Miller for all of the late nights prototyping, building, and stress-testing this product.
Fives years later, we’re deep in the payments game now.
Test frequently, learn fast, prioritize iterations, build, and repeat.
