Loyalty Interchange Protocol vs SpenVest

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.

SpenVest connects eligible restaurant sales to digital rewards while letting businesses keep their existing POS. Its Rewards Engine supports points, stamps, store value credit, cashback, reward thresholds, campaigns, bonus rules, redemption authorisations and refund reversals. A merchant dashboard shows reward members, recent activity and redemption history. Square supports sales, refunds and product catalogue data; Shopify POS and Clover support sales and refunds. Merchants can also send authenticated sale and refund events through the API, with signed webhooks for connected workflows. Eligible products can use an online catalogue and checkout for click and collect or local delivery. Payments are processed by the merchant's connected payment provider and paid to a configured merchant-owned account; SpenVest says it does not hold sales revenue. The company says it is built for Australian independent businesses and that coverage of participating merchants is expanding across Australia. Its free Connect plan supports one location but does not calculate rewards. The Rewards Engine costs $39 a month, billed monthly per location and excluding GST. The listed platforms include Android, iOS, web and API.