A loyalty program built to work at the register, not just in the browser
Picture a phone buzzing on a Tuesday afternoon with ten dollars of store credit that expires Friday, and picture that same customer three days later standing at a register in your first retail location, tapping a wallet pass while the associate rings up a purchase that has nothing to do with a browser or a cart. The balance that landed on her phone was assembled on your website, but it gets spent on a sales floor, through a POS terminal wired into the same ledger, and the two events have to reconcile to the dollar or the program breaks the first time someone tries to use it the way you told them to. That handoff, from a marketing message into a till transaction, is the actual engineering problem a loyalty platform solves once a brand sells anywhere besides a browser tab, and it is a different problem than picking a points-per-dollar ratio.
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A 2026 buyer’s guide to LoyaltyLion, Rivo, Rise.ai and Yotpo Loyalty for mid-market brands selling online and in store. Pricing verified October 22, 2026.
Consider this the walkthrough we build with clients the week a loyalty program has to survive contact with a cash register, or with a finance team asking what happens to unredeemed balances on the books. Budget about ten minutes. By the end you will know which of four platforms actually runs a time-boxed balance campaign well, which ones carry a loyalty identity into a physical POS terminal through Apple or Google Wallet and what that costs on each, and how each handles the points-liability and expiry conversation that shows up in an audit long after the marketing team has moved on.
What this guide covers
The short-fuse balance mechanic, the “ten dollars to spend by Friday” play, and why it is legally different from a gift card a customer actually paid for.
Which platforms carry a loyalty identity into Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Shopify POS so a program survives a customer walking into a physical store, and on which plan that capability actually sits.
The points-liability and expiry conversation finance teams ask about and marketing rarely raises first.
LoyaltyLion, Rivo, Rise.ai and Yotpo Loyalty, each assessed the same way: pricing, our read, the vendor in its own words where it has spoken to us, and who it suits.
A side-by-side table, a verdict written for the shape of business you actually run, and the questions we hear most from brands adding a physical location to an online program.
The short version. Rise.ai remains the strongest fit for the balance-and-urgency mechanic specifically, since its entire platform is built around gift cards, cashback and store credit, with tiers priced by monthly order volume from $16.99 a month on annual billing, and its Shopify listing now names Shopify POS among the tools it works with. Rivo earns its keep once physical retail matters, because Shopify POS arrives on its $15 Essential plan in the Shopify listing and across three locations on Scale, although the Apple and Google Wallet passes that once seemed bundled into its entry tier now belong to its Accounts product, which starts at $499 a month. LoyaltyLion is the deliberate choice for a brand that wants deep Klaviyo data and VIP tiering more than a POS-first design, with a free plan for stores under 400 orders, a published $199 Classic plan covering 500 orders and single-location POS, multi-location POS a tier up, and its Loyalty Pass wallet product sold as an add-on on every plan. Yotpo Loyalty is the one-vendor option for a brand already buying Yotpo Reviews, with a free plan, a $199 Pro plan whose per-order rate tapers as volume climbs, and VIP tiers held back for a quoted Premium plan. The reasoning behind each call follows below.
Where the mid-market line sits, and the finance question nobody raises first
We treat mid-market here as a brand doing between two million and fifty million dollars a year in revenue, using roughly a thousand orders a month as the trigger point because that is where these vendors’ own pricing tiers cut, not because it is a hard rule. A brand with a high average order value and a smaller, loyal repeat base can justify a higher tier, built for VIP treatment and POS reach, well before its order count alone would suggest it, and a brand opening its first retail location should be shopping for POS and wallet support before its volume numbers say it needs to.
The qualifying questions worth answering before a demo call: does the program need to work at a physical register in the next twelve months, or is it purely a browser experience for now; is the plan to run time-boxed promotional balances as a marketing lever, which changes which platform actually fits; and has anyone on the finance side been asked what happens to points or credit sitting unredeemed on the balance sheet, because that conversation is easier to have before the platform is chosen than after.
What the rules actually say about expiring balances
Federal Reserve Regulation E, at 12 CFR 1005.20, requires that a purchased gift certificate, store gift card, or general-use prepaid card carry an expiration date no earlier than five years from the date it was issued, and it restricts dormancy and inactivity fees on those instruments. The same rule, at 1005.20(b)(3), explicitly excludes a loyalty, award, or promotional gift card from that definition entirely. In plain terms, a balance a customer actually paid for cannot legally vanish inside five years, while a promotional balance a brand hands out, including a ten-dollar credit timed to expire by Friday, sits outside that federal floor and can be timed however the program design calls for. That distinction is exactly why the short-fuse mechanic is both effective and legally available, and exactly why finance and legal should track promotional-balance liability separately from any purchased store credit or gift card balance on the books, since state-level unclaimed-property rules vary and are not addressed by this federal exclusion.
What actually separates these platforms for a brand selling in store and online
Balance urgency has to be a platform primitive, not a workaround. Rise.ai is built natively around gift cards, cashback and store credit, so a short expiration window on a promotional balance is something the platform was designed to issue, track and remind customers about, a mechanic that is considerably harder to bolt onto a points-first platform after the fact.
Wallet and POS identity decide whether the program survives a walk into a store, and the price of each has moved since our September draft. Rivo integrates with Shopify POS from its Essential plan in the Shopify listing, while its Apple and Google Wallet passes now sit inside the Accounts product at $499 a month and up. LoyaltyLion covers a single POS location on Classic and multiple locations from Advanced, and sells its Apple and Google Wallet product, Loyalty Pass, as an optional add-on on every plan. Yotpo’s feature grid lists Shopify POS on Free, Pro and Premium, though its plan cards present POS support as a Premium feature, and Rise.ai’s Shopify listing names Shopify POS and POS rewards without describing an Apple Wallet pass of its own, which is worth confirming before assuming either handles the in-store handoff the same way.
Points expiry is a feature, and a finance decision, before it is a marketing lever. Rivo’s Cashback product is described on its own site as a ledger-backed store-credit balance with automatic credit expiry and no balance-sheet liability, which is a specific accounting claim worth verifying with your own controller rather than taking at face value. Yotpo places points expiration on Pro and describes it plainly as a way to control outstanding liability, and Rivo puts points expiry on Scale, while LoyaltyLion and Rise.ai both handle the expiry conversation inside plans rather than as a separate purchase.
A shared customer record with reviews removes a reconciliation step, at the cost of specialist depth. Yotpo and, per the companion reviews guide, REVIEWS.io‘s sibling Influence.io product both sit inside platform families that also sell reviews, so a brand buying reviews and loyalty from the same family avoids maintaining two separate customer databases by hand.
LoyaltyLion
Metered by monthly orders, with contracted thresholds above Classic. Shopify and other major platforms. 4.6 stars from 541 reviews on the Shopify App Store.
LoyaltyLion is the Klaviyo-literate program of the four, priced to say so, with a newly visible free plan beneath a published Classic tier and two quoted tiers above it that carry the VIP, multi-location and automation work a growing brand eventually wants.
Pricing
Plan | Monthly | Orders included | Above the cap | What unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Free | $0 | 400 | Upgrade | Points for on-site activities, dollar and percentage discount rewards, branding and customization, analytics and segments, on-site notifications, optional paid enhancements including emails |
Classic | $199 | 500 | Reviewed with LoyaltyLion if volume runs more than 25 percent over threshold for three months | Branded loyalty page built for you, pre-built earning rules, unlimited integrations, Klaviyo flows built for you, Shopify POS at a single location, VIP tiers as an optional add-on, 14-day trial |
Advanced | Quoted | Custom | Contracted | VIP tiers, points on product pages, Shopify POS across multiple locations, bonus points campaigns, Loyalty Challenges, translation into 130 plus languages, twice-yearly performance reviews |
Plus | Quoted | Custom | Contracted | AI-recommended rewards and timing, advanced Klaviyo events, automated LoyaltyLion Flows, quarterly strategic reviews |
Verified October 22, 2026 against LoyaltyLion’s own pricing page and its Shopify App Store listing. Both now show a free plan for stores processing 400 or fewer orders a month, and both price Classic at $199 for 500 orders; the Shopify listing places VIP tiers and POS locations inside Classic, while the pricing page treats VIP tiers as a Classic add-on and holds multiple POS locations for Advanced. Loyalty Pass, the Apple and Google Wallet product, is an optional add-on on every plan with no published price.
Our read
The two-hundred-dollar floor buys a genuinely deep Klaviyo integration rather than a bare points widget, and LoyaltyLion builds the flows and the loyalty page for you, which matters for a brand that already treats email and SMS as the center of its retention program and would rather spend its team’s attention on offers than on configuration. The arrival of a free plan below Classic is a welcome change since September, because it lets a brand under 400 orders live with the platform before committing, though the free tier is plainly a starting point rather than a mid-market program.
Its physical-store case is real but arrives in pieces, since a single register is covered on Classic, a second and third door move you into Advanced, which has no published price, and the wallet pass that makes the in-store moment feel effortless is a separately priced add-on on every tier. A brand opening more than one retail location on a LoyaltyLion program should get both of those numbers in writing, alongside its contracted order threshold, before assuming Classic covers the year ahead.
Who it suits
Brands with email and SMS already at the heart of retention, a single flagship or none, and an appetite for VIP tiering and Klaviyo-driven automation, who are comfortable buying multi-location POS and wallet passes on a quote as the store count grows.
Rivo
Metered by monthly orders, with separate products for Loyalty, Cashback and Accounts. Shopify. 4.7 stars from 1,440 reviews on the Shopify App Store.
Rivo is the Shopify-native platform that thinks most explicitly about the store floor, with POS on its lower plans and a product family that now prices store credit and customer identity as distinct purchases rather than folding them into one subscription.
Pricing
Plan | Monthly | Orders included | Above the cap | What unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Free (Shopify listing) | $0 | 200 | Upgrade | Points program, ways to earn and redeem, branding, automated email campaigns |
Essential (Shopify listing) | $15 | 500 | Upgrade | Dedicated loyalty and referral page, on-site prompts, two integrations, Shopify POS, 14-day trial |
Scale | $49 to $499 | 400 for $49, range 200 to 2,500 | $20 per 100 orders, capped at $499 | VIP tiers, points expiry, referrals, bonus campaigns, custom CSS and fonts, Shopify POS across three locations, unlimited integrations |
Plus | $499 | Up to 2,500 | Custom quote | Unlimited POS locations, Klaviyo events and custom integrations, developer toolkit, checkout extensions, advanced analytics |
Cashback | From $199 | Not published | Quoted | Ledger-backed store credit, configurable earn rate, automatic credit expiry, bulk credit drops |
Accounts | From $499 | Not published | Quoted | Apple and Google Wallet passes, passwordless login, wishlists, unified subscriptions and returns portal |
Custom | Quoted | Unlimited | Not applicable | Any combination of Cashback, Accounts, Loyalty, Referrals and Memberships, customer success manager, Slack Connect |
Verified October 22, 2026 against Rivo’s own pricing page and its Shopify App Store listing. The pricing page leads with Scale, Plus and a custom plan and lists Cashback and Accounts as separate products, while the Shopify listing adds a free plan and a $15 Essential plan beneath Scale; Rivo bills month to month and Scale carries a 7-day trial on its own site and a 14-day trial in the listing.
Our read
Rivo is still the platform built with physical retail in mind from the lower tiers rather than as an upsell, since Shopify POS arrives on Essential in the Shopify listing and runs across three locations on Scale, and the Scale formula, $49 for the first 400 orders, then $20 per hundred with a ceiling at $499, is one of the more legible ways to price a growing program. The step from Scale to Plus is really about location count, Klaviyo events and developer access rather than wholesale new capability, which makes the ladder easier to plan around than one where the top tier unlocks everything at once.
The change worth absorbing since September is that the wallet pass is no longer an entry-tier feature in practice. Apple and Google Wallet passes live in Accounts, which starts at $499 a month, and the ledger-backed Cashback product starts at $199, so the full version of the story this guide opened with, a credit drop, a wallet pass and a register scan, is a Custom-plan conversation on Rivo rather than a $49 one. Its claim that expired Cashback credit carries no balance-sheet liability remains a vendor accounting position worth confirming with your own accounting team rather than repeating to a controller as settled fact.
Who it suits
Shopify brands with one to three stores that want loyalty working at the register on a modest budget, and larger omnichannel brands prepared to assemble Loyalty, Cashback and Accounts into a custom plan once wallet passes and store credit both matter.
Rise.ai
Metered by monthly store orders, with a lower rate on annual billing. Shopify. 4.7 stars from 763 reviews on the Shopify App Store.
Rise.ai treats store credit as the product itself, with gift cards, cashback, refunds to credit and rewards gathered into one branded customer wallet, which makes it the natural home for the short-fuse balance this guide opened with.
Pricing
Plan | Monthly | Orders included | Above the cap | What unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Starter | $16.99 billed annually, $19.99 monthly | Up to 100 | $0.20 per order | Advanced gift card program, manual store credit, referrals, one automatic workflow |
Small Business | $47.99 billed annually, $59.99 monthly | Up to 400 | $0.15 per order | Two automatic workflows, one integration, claim page customization, check balance page |
Pro | $159.99 billed annually, $199.99 monthly | Up to 2,000 | $0.10 per order | Three automatic workflows, two integrations, apply store credit button, bulk gift card creation |
Premium | $479.99 billed annually, $599.99 monthly | Up to 12,000 | $0.05 per order | Unlimited workflows and integrations, white labeling |
Enterprise | Quoted | Custom | Custom | Flexible enterprise plans for high-volume and multi-store brands |
Verified October 22, 2026 against Rise.ai’s own pricing page and its Shopify App Store listing, which agree on the Starter, Small Business and Pro monthly prices and overage rates; every paid tier carries a 7-day trial and the published prices apply to Shopify merchants only. Prices are unchanged since our September draft.
Our read
Rise.ai is the platform actually built around the mechanic this guide opened with. Gift cards, cashback and store credit are the product rather than an add-on to a points system, so a time-boxed ten-dollar balance, the reminder that it is about to lapse and the button that applies it at checkout are all native behaviors, and the per-order overage tapers from twenty cents to five as the tiers climb, which rewards growth instead of punishing a strong month. Its Shopify listing now names Shopify POS and POS rewards among the tools it works with, which narrows the gap with Rivo for a brand that wants credit spent in a shop as easily as online.
What Rise.ai’s current pricing page no longer spells out is the finance tooling at the top of the ladder: our September draft recorded liability reporting and ERP integration on Enterprise, and today the page describes Enterprise only as flexible and quoted, so a brand buying for the audit conversation should ask for that capability by name. Nor does Rise.ai describe a native Apple Wallet pass, so a brand planning to carry a balance identity into a phone’s wallet should confirm the mechanism directly before assuming it ships standard.
Who it suits
Brands that want store credit, gift cards and expiring promotional balances to be the engine of retention rather than a feature of it, from a few hundred orders a month to well past ten thousand, and brands that already issue refunds as credit and want one wallet to hold it all.
Yotpo Loyalty
Free plan, then a monthly subscription with a tapering per-order rate. Shopify and Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, WooCommerce and headless builds through the API. 4.7 stars from 971 reviews on the Shopify App Store.
Yotpo prices Loyalty and Referrals separately from its Reviews product and as a Bundle with it, and its ladder is defined by a single step from free to $199, a usage rate that falls as volume rises, and VIP tiers that sit on a quoted plan above.
Pricing
Plan | Monthly | Orders included | Above the cap | What unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Stores under 100 orders a month, per the Shopify listing | Upgrade | Basic points and referrals, rewards sticky bar, fraud prevention, loyalty and referral dashboards; Yotpo’s feature grid also lists Shopify POS and Klaviyo |
Pro | From $199 | 500 | $0.20 per order to 1,000, $0.10 to 3,000, $0.05 to 10,000 | Rewards page, more ways to earn and redeem, redeem at checkout, points expiration, CRM integrations including Klaviyo and Recharge, webhooks |
Premium | Quoted | Custom | Custom | VIP tiers, smart segments and ROI analytics, scheduled and audience-targeted campaigns, custom CSS, dedicated onboarding and customer success, POS support |
Enterprise | Quoted | Custom | Custom | Cross-brand programs, advanced customization, multi-market scale, dedicated security and compliance |
Bundle (Reviews and Loyalty) | From $199 on Pro; $368 at 100 to 599 orders | Scales with order volume | Scales with order volume | Combined Reviews and Loyalty subscription at a lower rate than buying both separately |
Verified October 22, 2026 against Yotpo’s own Loyalty and Bundle pricing pages and its Shopify App Store listing, which disagree in two places worth knowing: the site describes a full free plan with no stated order cap, where the listing limits Free to stores under 100 monthly orders, and the site’s per-order rate tapers to $0.05, where the listing quotes $0.08 to $0.20 from 500 orders. Yotpo pointed us to its public pricing rather than a separate range.
Our read
Yotpo’s real advantage here is the shape of the stack rather than any single feature: a brand already buying Yotpo Reviews gets loyalty on the same account and, through the Bundle, at a lower combined rate, and because the reviews and the points describe the same customer, the segments that reach Klaviyo carry both what someone bought and what they said about it. The tapering Pro rate is among the most rational scaling models in this comparison once a brand is past five hundred orders a month, since it declines with volume rather than penalizing a strong season.
The tradeoff for an omnichannel brand is where the store-floor features sit. VIP tiers and the dedicated POS support Yotpo describes on its plan cards both live on Premium, which is quoted, so a brand that wants tiered status recognized at the register is buying a custom plan rather than Pro. Yotpo is also candid that it is configurable rather than infinitely so, which matters to a brand imagining coalition earn-and-burn or a bespoke points economy, and that a fully headless team wanting loyalty as a pure API primitive is better served elsewhere.
In their words
Yotpo describes its strongest fit as repeat-purchase categories where the second and third order are the whole economy, such as beauty, supplements, apparel, pet, and food and beverage, along with brands that already have review volume or want it, lean teams that want a marketer rather than a developer launching and iterating the program, Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants, and brands that want loyalty data flowing into email and SMS segmentation rather than sitting in a rewards silo. It is just as clear about who is better served elsewhere: merchants whose loyalty program is the product, such as coalition programs, complex multi-party earn and burn, or point economies that need bespoke logic; very early brands with low order volume; heavily custom or headless builds that want to own the front end entirely; B2B and wholesale-first businesses; and anyone who wants loyalty and only loyalty, forever, for whom a single-purpose tool may be the cleaner buy.
“Atelier is one of the partners we point merchants to when social proof is doing the heavy lifting. They don’t treat reviews, loyalty and UGC as three separate line items; they build them as one system and then make that system useful downstream, feeding segments into Klaviyo so the retention program is actually informed by what customers are saying and buying. That’s a harder thing to execute than it sounds, and it’s why the brands they run tend to get past the launch-and-forget phase.” Kaila Zimmerman, Director of Partnerships, Yotpo
Kaila Zimmerman
Director of Partnerships, Yotpo
Who it suits
Direct-to-consumer brands in repeat-purchase categories that already run, or plan to run, Yotpo Reviews and want one customer record feeding Klaviyo, with a lean marketing team rather than developers operating the program. It is a weaker fit for B2B or wholesale-first businesses, for programs that need bespoke points logic, and for a brand whose in-store VIP experience is the point, unless it is ready for a Premium quote.
Side by side
LoyaltyLion | Rivo | Rise.ai | Yotpo Loyalty | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Free plan | Up to 400 orders | 200 orders (Shopify listing) | None, 7-day trial | Under 100 orders (Shopify listing) |
Entry paid price | $199 (Classic) | $15 (Essential, Shopify listing); $49 (Scale) | $16.99 annual, $19.99 monthly | $199 (Pro) |
Orders on entry paid plan | 500 | 500 on Essential; 400 on Scale | 100 | 500, then per order |
Above the cap | Contracted threshold, reviewed above 25 percent | $20 per 100 on Scale, capped at $499 | $0.20 to $0.05 per order | $0.20 to $0.05 per order (site); $0.08 to $0.20 (listing) |
Apple and Google Wallet | Loyalty Pass, optional add-on on every plan | Accounts product, from $499 | Not described | Not described |
Shopify POS | Single location on Classic, multiple from Advanced | Essential and up; three locations on Scale, unlimited on Plus | Listed as working with Shopify POS | In the feature grid on every plan; POS support listed on Premium |
VIP tiers | Classic add-on, included from Advanced | Scale and up | Not the core product | Premium, quoted |
Balance and credit expiry | Points program, not the core product | Points expiry on Scale; Cashback with automatic credit expiry from $199 | Core product, all tiers | Points expiration on Pro |
Liability tooling for finance | Not described | Ledger-based Cashback, no balance-sheet liability claimed | Enterprise, ask for liability reporting by name | Points expiration and fraud prevention to reduce liability |
Shopify App Store rating | 4.6 (541) | 4.7 (1,440) | 4.7 (763) | 4.7 (971) |
Pricing verified October 22, 2026, from each vendor’s own pricing page and Shopify App Store listing. We re-verify the whole series quarterly.
The recommendation, by the brand you actually run
A brand planning to run time-boxed promotional balances as a real acquisition and win-back lever should start with Rise.ai, since the mechanic is the product rather than a feature bolted onto points, and the pricing scales cleanly with order volume from a genuinely low floor. A brand opening its first physical location, or already running two or three, should weight Rivo heavily, since Shopify POS ships on its lower plans rather than requiring an upgrade to prove the concept, while budgeting for Accounts if wallet passes are part of the plan. A brand that already treats Klaviyo as the center of its retention stack and wants VIP tiering handled with care is better served by LoyaltyLion, accepting that more than one store and a wallet pass both cost a quote rather than a published number. And a brand already paying for Yotpo Reviews, particularly in a repeat-purchase category with a lean team, should at minimum price the Bundle before assuming a separate loyalty platform is worth the second contract.
Questions we hear from brands adding a store to an online program
Which loyalty platform works best for a time-limited balance campaign?
Rise.ai is built specifically around gift card, cashback and store credit mechanics, so issuing a promotional balance with a short expiration window, reminding the customer before it lapses and applying it at checkout are native behaviors rather than workarounds, which is the core use case this question describes.
Is a ten-dollar credit that expires Friday legal?
Yes. Federal Regulation E requires a five-year minimum expiration window on purchased gift certificates and store gift cards, but explicitly excludes loyalty, award and promotional gift cards from that same rule, so a short-fuse promotional balance sits outside the federal floor, although state rules vary and are worth checking with counsel.
Which platforms support Apple Wallet and Shopify POS for an in-store loyalty program?
As of October 22, 2026, LoyaltyLion sells Apple and Google Wallet passes as its Loyalty Pass add-on on every plan and covers Shopify POS at one location on Classic and several from Advanced; Rivo offers Shopify POS from its Essential plan and wallet passes through its Accounts product from $499 a month; Yotpo lists Shopify POS in its feature grid; and Rise.ai lists Shopify POS but describes no wallet pass of its own.
What happens to unredeemed points or credit on the balance sheet?
Purchased gift card and store credit balances generally remain a liability until redeemed or escheated under state unclaimed-property law, while promotional or loyalty-program balances are treated differently under federal rules; either way, this is a conversation to have with your own controller before launch, not after an audit.
Do we need a separate finance conversation for points versus gift cards?
Yes. Regulation E’s carve-out for loyalty, award and promotional balances means the accounting and legal treatment of points differs from the treatment of a gift card a customer actually paid for, and the two should be tracked separately on the books.
Can a loyalty program and a reviews program run on one bill?
Yotpo sells both under one account through its Bundle, which starts at $199 on Pro and read $368 a month in the 100 to 599 order range when we checked, and our companion guide to reviews platforms for mid-market and multichannel brands covers the reviews side of that pairing in detail.
How much does it cost to add loyalty to Shopify POS specifically?
Rivo includes Shopify POS from its $15 Essential plan in the Shopify listing and across three locations on Scale from $49, LoyaltyLion covers one location on its $199 Classic plan and reserves multiple locations for its quoted Advanced tier, and Yotpo’s dedicated POS support sits on Premium, so the honest cost comparison depends on how many physical locations are actually in play.
Where to go next
If reviews are also on the table this quarter, the companion guide to reviews platforms for mid-market and multichannel brands covers syndication and order verification, the two capabilities that change once a brand sells in more than one place. And if the honest situation is that nobody has confirmed with finance what an expiring balance actually does to the books, that conversation is exactly where our loyalty and rewards practice starts, usually alongside the reviews program running next to it. Our work with Bully Sticks Direct and Moonglow Jewelry shows both programs built to compound rather than simply launch, and a conversation costs nothing but the reading you have already done.
