This guide is for retailers choosing a platform: department stores, specialty chains, grocers and groups that run several banners. It covers the capabilities that matter in retail and where the software plugs in. Then it gives a demo checklist and a selection process. For programs worth studying, see our best retail loyalty programs guide. For the retail ecosystems running on GRAVTY today, see retail loyalty on GRAVTY. For named platforms side by side, see our best loyalty management software guide.
What does retail loyalty program software do?
It turns each sale into part of a member record. At checkout it finds the member and reads the basket. It applies the program's rules and sends rewards back to the till or the cart. Afterward it keeps the balance, the tier and the history that every later offer starts from.
Retail makes each step heavier. A basket can hold dozens of lines. A shopper buys in a store, in the app and on the website, then returns items through any of them. A group can run several banners under one card. Kroger, for one, operates supermarkets under a variety of local banner names in 35 states. It also counts fuel as part of its loyalty offering.
What matters most in retail loyalty software?
SKU-level data on each basket
Retail rules run on items. Think of double points on one brand, or a coupon a supplier pays for. Each one needs the SKU and the price the shopper paid after discounts.
The industry has a standard record for this. The Object Management Group hosts the ARTS POSLog schema. Its POSLog 6.0 version captures point-of-service data wherever the sale happens, in stores, on websites or by phone. Ask whether a vendor reads your POSLog, or your POS vendor's own format, as it stands today.
A known member on every sale
The share of sales tied to a known member sets what the program can see. Kroger says that because of its rewards program, over 95% of customer transactions are tethered to a Kroger loyalty card. Ulta Beauty Rewards had more than 46 million members, and about 95% of Ulta U.S. sales in fiscal 2025 came from them, per its annual report. Ask each vendor how fast a shopper can join at the till and in the app. Every anonymous sale is a basket the program cannot use.
One record for store and online
Ulta's filing shows why. In fiscal 2025, 73% of its loyalty members bought only in stores. Another 19% shopped both in stores and on its digital platforms. Ulta says those omnichannel guests have historically spent over three times as much as store-only guests. Split the store and online balances, and the program cannot see its best shoppers as one person.
Returns cross channels too. Retailers told the National Retail Federation they expected 15.8% of 2025 sales to come back as returns. The same report found that 9% of returns are fraudulent. An online order returned in a store has to take back the points it earned, in the same step as the refund. A partial return is harder. The points come off one line, and any reward tied to the basket total has to be worked out again. Our loyalty fraud guide covers the abuse patterns.
Money from partners and suppliers
Supplier money turns loyalty data into a second line of profit. Kroger sells ads to the brands on its shelves through Kroger Precision Marketing, its retail media arm. It says it can link each ad seen to what a household then buys, in stores and online. Its other profit lines, retail media among them, brought in $1.5 billion of operating profit in 2025. Ulta runs its own media arm, UB Media, for the brands it sells.
That link holds only when the platform keeps item history per member. Each partner's offers also have to settle to the cent. Our partner settlement guide covers how the money moves.
Receipts as proof of purchase
Not every sale passes through a till you control. A consumer brand sells through other retailers. A mall group has tenants with their own POS. In both cases the receipt is the only proof of purchase. The platform has to read it down to the line and reject the same receipt sent twice.
Rules merchants can change
Retail promotions change often. The people who plan them should write the rules themselves, in a tool they can read. Ask who writes a rule in the demo, and how it gets tested against past baskets before it goes live. Then ask how it is rolled back when it misfires. Every change needs a log of who made it and when.
Orders placed by AI agents
Kroger's latest annual report names an emerging risk. AI agents that research, compare and buy for shoppers could cut the retailer out of the customer relationship. Kroger warns this could leave it less able to see how customers behave. For a loyalty platform, the test is plain. When an agent places the order, does the member ID travel with it? Does the order earn? Ask each vendor to show an order placed by a third party through the API, posted to the right member. Our agentic AI guide covers the wider shift.
Offers you can test
Personal offers run on the same item history. A shopper who buys one coffee brand every week needs a different offer from one who tried it once. Hold a random group back from each offer and measure the gap. The loyalty personalization guide covers how the offer gets picked.
Where does retail loyalty software connect to your stack?
- Store POS. Member lookup, earn, spend and returns inside the sale, at every lane and self-checkout.
- Ecommerce and app. The same calls in the cart, plus login and the balance on screen.
- CRM, CDP and messaging. Segments go out and events come back. Ulta personalizes offers through its CRM platform.
- Data warehouse. The full item history goes here for analysts, finance and the media team.
- ERP and finance. Bills to partners, payments from suppliers and the points still owed.
- Payments and cards. Card-linked earn, and points used as a way to pay.
- Identity and consent. The login keeps each member's consent and opt-outs in one place.
Finance is an integration too. Ulta holds back revenue for points that members have earned and not yet spent. It has to estimate what a point is worth and how many will be used. Its auditor named that estimate a critical audit matter, because it rests on how customers will behave. The auditor tested the data on points issued, used and expired. That data comes from the loyalty platform. Our points liability guide explains the accounting.
What should a retail loyalty software checklist cover?
Use this table in demos. Ask the vendor to run each row live, on your products and your test stores. Slides do not count.
| Criterion | Why it matters | What to ask in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| Store and online on one balance | A shopper who buys in both is one person. | Post a store sale and an online order for one member. Show one balance. |
| Rules on each item | Item offers and supplier coupons need each line of the basket. | Run double points on one brand inside a mixed basket. |
| Goods that come back | Points and rewards must come back with the goods. | Return one item from a basket paid partly with points. |
| Rules per banner | Each banner sets its own rules for the same member. | Give two banners different earn rates. Show one member in both. |
| Offers paid by suppliers | Suppliers pay for what their offers moved. | Fund an offer from a supplier and show its settlement report. |
| Proof of purchase | Some sales happen on tills you do not run. | Scan a paper receipt. Then send it again and show the reject. |
| Offer tests | A holdout group shows what an offer caused. | Launch an offer with a holdout and report the lift. |
| Opt-outs and deletes | California has rules for opt-outs in loyalty. | Opt a member out of sale and sharing. Show the rewards stay. |
| Points still owed | Auditors test the data behind the points owed. | Export points issued, used and expired, by banner and month. |
| Rule changes | Each new promotion brings new rules. | Change an earn rule with no code release. Show the audit trail. |
| Peak load | Holiday peaks hit every lane at once. | Show load test results at our holiday peak. |
| Your data, and how you leave | The member file is the asset the program builds. | Export each member and each sale in a file we own. |
How do you run a retail loyalty platform selection?
- Start from your own numbers. Pull your identification rate, banner count, lines per basket, return rate and peak hour. Those numbers are your requirements.
- Turn the checklist into scripts. Write each row above as a task the vendor performs live, on your data.
- Keep the short list short. Pick a field small enough that every vendor runs every script.
- Run a proof of concept on your transaction log. Replay a week of real baskets, returns included. Compare the points with your current system, line by line. For illustration, a grocer with 300 stores replays one week of 2 million baskets through each vendor on the short list. Say two vendors post different points on 3,000 of those baskets. Those 3,000 baskets are the conversation, because each one is a rule a vendor read in its own way.
- Call references that look like you. Ask for retailers that match your POS and your scale.
- Bring finance and privacy in early. Finance needs the points data from day one. Privacy needs answers on the California rules, whose examples include loyalty programs. A clothing store can keep the email and spend data a member needs to stay in its program after a delete request. A grocer that drops a shopper who opts out of data sales is breaking the rules, unless its discounts are reasonably related to the value of the data.
- Write the exit into the contract. Cover data export and help during the move. Add a clause for a change of control at the vendor.
- Plan the move before you sign. Our loyalty platform migration guide covers how members and balances move.
How GRAVTY handles retail loyalty
GRAVTY is the loyalty platform from Loyalty Juggernaut. Retail programs on it include Spin Premia by FEMSA and SHARE by Majid Al Futtaim. Liverpool runs its department store program, Cliente Consentido, on it too, with 10M+ active members. Spin Premia runs real-time engagement across 33,000 stores.
Each banner's earn rates and tiers are set in Visual Rules, the patented no-code rules engine. Merchandising managers write rules, simulate them against the last 90 days of shopper data and deploy them without an IT ticket. Adding a partner, and settling with it, is part of the base platform. GRAVTY AI-Scan reads receipts for instant rewards and personal offers in offline retail. GRAVTY runs 500M+ members in production on a 99.99% uptime SLA. Its 150+ system integrations run from Toshiba and Oracle ORPOS tills to Salesforce Commerce and Shopify. For a retailer with many banners, that means one member record across every banner and partner.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between retail loyalty software and a POS loyalty module?
A POS loyalty module runs inside one till system, while retail loyalty software runs one program across every till, website, app and banner. The module suits a retailer on a single store system. A retailer with several POS brands or banners needs the platform, because one program has to sit above all of them.
Can one loyalty platform run several retail banners?
Yes. One member record carries one balance, and each banner keeps its own earn rates, tiers and offers. Kroger runs stores under a variety of local banner names. Over 95% of its customer transactions are tied to a Kroger loyalty card.
What is SKU-level data in a loyalty program?
It is the line-by-line record of each product a member bought and the price paid. With it, a program can reward a brand or a category. Without it, the program can only reward total spend.
How do retailers make money from loyalty data?
They sell ads to the brands on their shelves and measure them against what members then buy. Kroger does this through Kroger Precision Marketing. Its other profit lines, retail media among them, brought in $1.5 billion of operating profit in 2025.
What privacy rules apply to retail loyalty programs in California?
The CCPA rules treat a program that trades rewards for personal data as a financial incentive. It needs a notice before the shopper opts in. The notice gives a good-faith estimate of what the shopper's data is worth and how that was worked out. The rules also bar dropping a member who opts out of data sales, unless the rewards are reasonably related to the value of that data.
How do retailers account for loyalty points?
They defer part of each sale as revenue until members redeem the points or the points expire. Ulta estimates the value of a point and the share members will redeem. Its auditor named that estimate a critical audit matter in the fiscal 2025 report.