Rewards: tap, and the counter knows you

The paper card in your wallet has four stamps on it. You cannot remember which café it is from, and you will not find it when you are there.

Rewards on Mosey have no card, because the payment is the stamp.

How it works

1. Join, once. One tap at a place you go to. Free, and you can leave any time.

2. Go, as normal. When you pay through Mosey, the visit counts itself. Nothing to open, nothing to ask for.

3. Tap at the counter, or read out your code. Tap your phone on the tag and your card opens on the staff screen — what you are owed, what is ready, what you have booked. If your phone is buried, read out the six-digit code instead.

4. They sort it out. Staff add the visit or hand over the reward.

You cannot give yourself anything

Worth saying plainly, because people assume a tap is a self-service till.

Tapping does not grant you anything. It opens your card on the staff screen so the person serving you can see who you are and what you are owed. They decide what happens. It is the difference between showing somebody your card and helping yourself.

There are two narrow exceptions, both switched on by a place and both obvious when they apply: checking yourself in at the door of an event you have a ticket for, and collecting a stamp on a food trail once your phone confirms you are actually there.

The kinds of rewards places run

Places set their own, so what you are collecting differs.

• Visits — go a set number of times, get something. The usual one for a café, where the whole thing is habit.
• Spend — spend a set amount, get credit back. More common where the bill is larger and the visits are occasional.
• Stamps on specific items — a card for coffees, or for a particular dish.
• Tiers — the more you go, the better the standing.

You can see where you are at any point, including while you are still standing at the counter, which is the moment it is actually interesting.

What the place sees

What you have done at their place. Your first name if you have set one.

Nothing else. Not where else you eat, not what you rated somewhere last week, not your surname. A café you go to on Tuesdays knows you go on Tuesdays, which is the point, and nothing beyond it.

Rewards that are about to run out

A reward you forgot about is a reward you did not get, and that is the most common way these end.

You get a reminder before one expires — about a week ahead, and again the day before. Most unclaimed rewards are somebody forgetting rather than deciding, and a nudge at the right moment is the difference between a free coffee and a small annoyance.

You can leave a programme whenever you like, too. Nothing follows you around, and somewhere you have stopped going stops being something you have to think about.

Why bother

Because you already go. The coffee you buy four mornings a week is a habit you are not being thanked for, and the place you go to every Thursday would rather you kept doing it.

The honest version: rewards work when you were going anyway. If a programme is making you go somewhere you do not want to go, it is working on the place rather than on you.

What else to look at

• Ratings — what people who went actually thought
• Order ahead — skipping the queue at the same counter
• Memberships — when a place is worth a standing arrangement
• Lists — the places you keep going back to