A stamp lands in Places 360 when a customer holds their phone against a small NFC tag on your counter. The tag is the cheapest part of the whole thing, and it is the one part you buy. Here is what you get, where to put it, what to say, and how to tell it is working.
What to buy.
A Places 360 tag, in our standard design. Every paid plan comes with one, free, and Branded app with one in your own design; further tags, and tags on the Free plan, are £9 + VAT each. It arrives ready to use – nothing needs programming before it does – and one by the till is enough to start.
Tags are about 55 × 85 mm, with a sticky back. A standard tag can stamp a card, clock staff in or log a fridge check, whichever you set it up for. A tag in your own design is £29 + VAT, for your stamp card; it is made to order, and we email you a proof before we print. Order them in the app or at places360.io/shop, where there is also an A5 acrylic stand (£9 + VAT) and a poster with your QR code to go in it (£4 + VAT). Standard UK delivery is £3.99 + VAT an order.
There is no reader, no countertop pod, no cable and nothing to plug in: the tag is passive and the customer’s phone does the work. Nothing on your counter needs power, charging or a rental agreement, and a worn tag is replaced rather than repaired.
Registering one.
Open the business side of the app and go to the tag list. Choose to add a tag, hold your phone against it until it reads, then name it for where it lives – “Front counter”, “Second till”, “Coffee hatch”. Bind it to the stamp card it should stamp, and save.
From then on that tag’s ID is tied to your venue and that card, and every tap is checked on our side, so an unregistered tag does nothing at all.
Where to put it.
- At the till, at the exact spot the customer is already standing and waiting while you take payment or bag things up. That pause is the whole opportunity.
- Not on the window. People walking past do not tap, and an outside tag gets rain, sun and picked at.
- One per counter, flat on the counter top or the front face of the till, within reach of an arm that is not leaning.
- A small card or stand beside it, so people know what it is. “Tap here to collect a stamp” is enough wording.
What to say at the counter.
One sentence, repeated by whoever is on the till, works better than an explanation of the app:
“Tap your phone here and you’ll get a stamp.”
Say it while you are handing the order over, not before. If they ask what it is, the honest answer is short: the card lives in the Places 360 app, there is no plastic, and a first stamp works without signing up for anything.
How to tell it is working.
Watch the customer’s phone. The card opens, there is a sound, and the counter rolls to its new number – seven of ten becomes eight of ten while they are still standing there. That is the confirmation, and it is why the tap is worth doing at the counter rather than afterwards.
On your side, the business dashboard shows the activity as it comes in, so you can check at the end of a shift whether taps are actually happening or the card by the till is being ignored.
If a tag stops reading.
Tags wear out. They get wiped down a hundred times a week, scraped by card machines, soaked and eventually bent. When one stops responding, deregister it in the tag list and register a fresh one in its place under the same name and the same card. It takes under a minute and nothing about your stamp cards or your customers’ history changes.
That is the point of a passive tag rather than a piece of hardware: replacing one is a countertop job rather than a support ticket. If taps are failing for a particular customer rather than for everyone, the problem is usually elsewhere.
Tags are yours to buy and ours to validate. The stamp cards, the page and the rest of the product sit on top of them.
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