Your shoppers are already paying with a credit card. Right now, the rewards from those purchases go somewhere else.
Fourth quarter is when that gap costs the most. Holiday baskets are bigger, trips are more frequent, and the spending around them (fuel for the drive to family, the pharmacy run, the restaurant meal between cooking days) is almost all on plastic. Every one of those swipes earns something for a bank or an airline.
What if you had your own branded card to change where that value lands. For retailers already running AppCard, it is the same loyalty engine you have today with a payment layer on top: the rewards your shoppers earn everywhere come back to your bottom line.
Earned everywhere, redeemed at your store
The mechanic is simple. Cardholders use the AppCard Credit Card, branded for your stores, wherever Visa is accepted, and earn AppCard Perks on those purchases. Perks are redeemed as grocery savings at your checkout.
That is the difference from a general-purpose rewards card. A bank card lets a shopper earn in your aisles and spend those rewards on a flight. This one works in the other direction: the gas station, the hardware store, the airline, the pharmacy all contribute to a rewards balance that can only be spent with you.
The AppCard Smart Card extends rewards to shoppers who do not qualify for a traditional credit card. It is a secured product with a refundable deposit, so it reaches households a credit card would turn away, and it reports to the bureaus. Those shoppers build credit while they earn Perks for your store. For most grocers that is a meaningful share of the customer base, and it is the part of the program national chains generally do not offer.
The earn rates favor your store, by design
Most cards pay a flat 1% or 2% on everything. This one is tiered, and the tiers are weighted toward the behavior you want:
| Eligible purchase | Credit Card | Smart Card |
|---|---|---|
| Store-brand items at your store | 6 Perks per $1 | 2 Perks per $1 |
| Everything else at your store | 5 Perks per $1 | 1 Perk per $1 |
| Fuel | 5 Perks per $1 | 1 Perk per $1 |
| Cardholder's chosen bonus category | 5 Perks per $1 | N/A |
| All other purchases | 2 Perks per $1 | 1 Perk per $1 |
The top rate sits on private label, the highest-margin items in the store and the hardest to get trial on. A cardholder deciding between the national brand and yours is looking at an accelerated earn rate to pick yours.
How do you make money?
Perks are funded by AppCard. When a cardholder redeems at your checkout, AppCard absorbs the cost of that redemption. You get the foot traffic and the basket without funding the discount that drove it.
$20 for every card enrolled. Enrollment pays a direct bounty back to the store. It is a rare case where signing a customer up for something generates revenue on the spot rather than costing marketing spend.
Lower cost of acceptance. Transactions on the branded card carry a processing rebate, so the more of your volume that shifts onto it, the less you pay to accept payment. That is the piece most loyalty programs cannot touch: it improves the economics of sales you were already making.
Marketing Support. Retailers receive a complete marketing package, including digital assets, email and text message templates, and in-store signage.
The branded card also does something a loyalty app cannot. It sits in a physical wallet, between the shopper's bank card and their license, with your name on it. Your brand gets seen in places your circular never reaches.
It bolts onto what you already run
If you are already on AppCard, the card program is an add-on, not a project. It uses the loyalty account and the phone number your shoppers already have. Redemption happens through the same checkout rewards screen your cashiers use now.
There is nothing to install:
- No new hardware, terminal or second screen at the lane
- No change to cashier workflow
- No setup cost to launch
And there is no ongoing work. AppCard runs the card marketing, underwriting, cardholder servicing, statements, compliance and fraud support. Your front end scans groceries exactly as it does today. That matters most in Q4, when store managers have the least slack. The program does not add a line to their list in the busiest ten weeks of the year. Instead, while your team focuses on the Q4 rush, shoppers are racking up serious cashback, setting the stage for a massive wave of returning customers when you need it most this January.
Worth a conversation before the season turns
25+ retailers have already signed up for a card branded for their stores. If you want to see what one would look like with your name on it, an AppCard Customer Success Manager can walk you through the program and what it would mean for your shoppers.
AppCard is a financial technology company and is not a bank. The AppCard Credit Card and AppCard Smart Card are issued by TAB Bank, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Cards may be branded for participating grocers. Terms, exclusions, merchant-category rules and redemption requirements apply. Rewards are earned as AppCard Perks and may be redeemed at participating locations.