NFC tap to stamp: the digital stamp card
that works with one tag.
This is the part people remember. A phone held to a tag by the till, and a stamp appears on the card. Here is exactly what happens, what the tag actually is, and what staff do on the days it does not work.
AT THE COUNTER
What a stamp actually looks like.
1. Open the app
The customer opens Places 360 and picks your card. No account is needed for a first stamp – guest mode covers it, and they can sign up later without losing anything.
2. Tap Collect
One button on the card. The collect sheet opens and the phone starts listening.
3. Hold the phone to the tag
The tag sits by the till, wherever you want the hand to go. It can live under a laminate or inside a menu stand.
4. The stamp lands
The card updates while the phone is still in their hand. If that was the last stamp, the reward is there before they have put the phone away.
The tag is just a tag.
Every paid plan comes with one tag, free, and one by the till is enough to start; on Branded app it carries your own design. Further tags, and tags on the Free plan, are £9 + VAT in our standard design. You register it by opening the business side of the app and tapping it – the app reads its UID and ties it to your venue.
There is no reader to buy, no countertop pod to rent, nothing to plug in and nothing to charge. The tag is passive and the customer’s phone does the work. If one gets scraped off or drowned in coffee, you register a replacement in a few seconds.
iPhone and Android.
Both read the tag. The Places 360 app ships on iPhone and Android, and tap-to-stamp works the same on each. Nothing in the flow depends on a wallet pass or on a particular handset maker.
When the tap does not work.
Sometimes it will not. A phone case with cards in it, an older handset, NFC switched off, a customer who would rather not hold their phone out. Staff open a scan from the venue side, authorised by their PIN, and read the QR code on the customer’s card. The stamp lands the same way, on the same ledger, and the customer sees the same thing.
The customer’s own stamp code shows without a signal, so a dead spot by the counter or a phone with no data still gets served. Read the fallback steps
What stops a free coffee being minted.
Every stamp is validated on our server, not decided by the phone in someone’s hand. Under that sit four plain rules:
- Only tag IDs you have registered count. A stranger’s tag does nothing.
- A cooldown per card, so one tap is not five.
- A daily cap per customer, which you set.
- An optional location check, if you want stamps to happen only at the venue.
Stamps are an append-only ledger. Nothing gets rewritten behind a customer’s back, and you can see the run of them in your dashboard.
Why a tap beats a phone number.
The common alternative is reading a phone number out at the till. It is slow, it is loud, it is wrong often enough to need a second go, and it happens while three people wait behind. Some customers will not say their number aloud at all, so they quietly stop collecting and the loyalty card goes half-used.
A tap is one hand, no talking, no typing, and it is over before the card machine has finished. Staff learn it in one shift.
THE REST OF IT
The tap is the demo, not the product.
The stamp card sits on your own page in the app, next to your menu, your ordering and your offers. One vendor, one flat price for the business, however many locations you have.
Your next repeat customer starts here.
Give people a little reason to come back. Free to start, and yours to shape.
Free to start · No contract · Cancel any time