An Apple Wallet and Google Wallet loyalty card for your chain: the order call and the stamp card, with no app
If your chain has 3 or more branches, the question is no longer "should we run a loyalty programme?" but "how do all the branches share one card the guest opens without installing an app?" This post answers with sourced numbers and ends on one step.
Paying by phone is now the default
SAMA reported that electronic payments were 79% of retail transactions in 2024, up from 70% the year before. A guest who pays with a phone is ready for a card that lives in it.
Wallet is in the guest's phone
Google launched Google Pay and Google Wallet in Saudi Arabia in September 2025, and the wallet stores loyalty cards among other passes. Apple Wallet is on every iPhone. The guest adds the card by scanning one code at the cashier, and installs nothing.
Why guests come back sooner
A 2006 study in the Journal of Marketing Research followed a coffee card with a free coffee after 10 purchases and found the gap between purchases shrank by about 20% from the first stamp to the last; the figure comes from university summaries, not the full text. A second 2006 paper gave car-wash customers 2 free stamps up front, and they finished the card more often and faster. So your card starts with two free stamps.
In the UK, Costa simplified its scheme and The Drum reported in August 2022 that transactions grew 16% since the change. That is the company's figure, in a different market. No independent Saudi restaurant result was found, so none is promised.
What a chain needs
- One card per brand, in its own logo and colours, with AhlanMate small at the bottom.
- One company with many branches and brands; branches and staff are not limited in the price.
- The guest called to the counter by their phone or watch when the order is ready, so no pagers.
- Every stamp and redemption recorded once, however the connection behaves, and every correction with a reason.
- A guest's private details stay private: a branch sees the first name, visits and card only.
AhlanMate is not a delivery or ordering app. It takes no orders or payments; your till stays as it is.
How the first branch starts
The administrator registers the company and its brands, adds the first branch and prints the counter code. The first live ticket should take under 10 minutes. The same step repeats for the other branches, and each brand keeps one card.
How head office reads the numbers
The dashboard shows visits, completed cards and redeemed rewards for each branch and each brand, so you see which branch brings its guests back and which needs attention. A guest's private details show to head office only as far as the settings and the guest's consent allow, and never reach the cashier.
On language
The guest page is written in Arabic and English, numbers are Western digits (0 to 9) on every screen, and the name AhlanMate stays in Latin letters.
The sum
A pager app at about SAR 50 a month and a loyalty tool at about SAR 94 come to about SAR 144 a month. AhlanMate's proposed size for most cafés is SAR 99 a month (about USD 26 at 3.75 SAR per USD). About 6 extra visits a month cover it at a SAR 28 ticket and a 65% margin. The price is a draft until it is set, and your chain's number is counted on your branches.
One step
Book a short demo. We run the screen on your phone: a card in your brand, a live order call, then agree a trial in a few branches.