CardFree Loyalty vs Loyalty Interchange Protocol

CardFree Loyalty is a configurable loyalty platform for restaurants building branded rewards programs and encouraging repeat visits. Enrollment can be offered through web and app ordering, kiosks, tableside service, POS, and receipt scans. Programs can use one or multiple membership tiers, reward catalogs, and banked points. Customers may earn through milestones, transactions, item purchases, multipliers, gift-card activity, challenges, randomized offers, and referrals; points can be redeemed for dollar or percentage discounts on orders or menu items. A merchant portal supports audience segmentation, offer creation, campaign analytics, and email, SMS, push, or geolocation-triggered campaigns. Campaigns may be sent immediately, scheduled, or triggered by birthdays, transactions, and inactivity. Customers can manage personal gift cards and send digital cards by SMS or email. CardFree lists integrations across ordering, kiosks, tableside, POS, and receipt scans, and says it also integrates with payment processors, loyalty programs, gift cards, and other systems. It is available on Android, iOS, and the web. CardFree describes security protections for personal data but does not guarantee absolute security. Pricing is on request; the company invites businesses to contact it or book a demo.

Loyalty Interchange Protocol (LIP) is an open-source loyalty platform and vendor-neutral transaction protocol for restaurant technology teams that own integration work. Its checkout lifecycle includes member lookup and enrollment, balances and ledger history, order evaluation, accrual, redemption, reversal, and refund-safe adjustments. Its restaurant order model represents items, modifiers, discounts, fees, taxes, tips, tenders, and totals across channels such as drive-thru, kiosk, web, mobile, pickup, delivery, and catering. Supported program types include points, visits or stamps, wallet credit, paid membership, and hybrid multi-account programs.

The `/platform/v1` API covers profiles, consent, behavioral events, segments, campaigns, connectors, imports, analytics, and attribution. The maker provides an Apache-2.0 reference stack for self-hosting with Docker Compose or Node.js 22 and newer. Storage described includes SQLite-backed local storage and tenant-scoped PostgreSQL for multi-instance use. Customer sign-in remains external. LIP 0.2.0 is described as pre-1.0 infrastructure, not a turnkey no-code marketing service; CSV member imports are limited to 1 MiB and 1,000 rows.