How to move from a paper card or another app

A large program can move its members because the balance was never on the card. Sunway's published answers put it in one line: "the Sunway points are held in the account, not the cards". When Lotus's replaced Clubcard with My Lotus's, its answers told members "we will automatically migrate your account for you", and that unused vouchers "have been transferred to your My Lotus's account" (both companies' pages read on 10 October 2026).

Even that move left a gap. Vouchers a member had redeemed and not yet used could not be carried: "we are unable to migrate coupons or vouchers that were redeemed but not used", so Lotus's "refunded points of equivalent value". The old card was also given an end: "Clubcard will soon NOT be accepted for points collection."

A paper card has no account behind it. The stamps are on the card and nowhere else, so there is nothing to import. In native.cards the rule covers an old app's balances as well. The program setup says: "Staff only confirm that a purchase happened. native.cards works out the stamps or points, so a balance can never be typed in by hand." A manager or admin can correct a staff error, which removes value and never adds it. Members cannot be loaded in either. Each customer joins for themselves, with their own email address and a 6-digit code.

Copy what Lotus's did with the part it could not carry: settle it another way, and give the old card a stated last day.

In the most detailed study of a stamp card we know, at a café on an American university campus, one test timed the cards customers finished: a card of ten took 24.6 days on average. At that pace a customer with five stamps is under two weeks from a free coffee. The cards nobody was going to finish look different: the 73 unfinished cards the researchers bought back had been carried for 65 days on average.

Cancel paper on launch day and you take a nearly earned coffee from the regulars, on the day you ask them to do something for you. In a 2009 study of programs with status levels, "loyalty intentions are indeed lower for demoted customers than for those who have never been awarded a preferred status". Such programs, its authors wrote, "can drive otherwise loyal customers away from a firm". We read the study in its abstract. The finding comes from a scenario experiment, and it is about status levels, not stamps. Carrying it over to a half-filled card is our reasoning: what a customer has earned, they count as theirs.

Notice matters too. Among terms that "may be regarded as unfair", the United Kingdom's Consumer Rights Act 2015 lists one that lets a trader change a contract "without a valid reason which is specified in the contract". It excepts an open-ended contract where the consumer gets "reasonable notice" and may leave. That is British law. We did not establish what Malaysian law says about ending a stamp card, and this is not legal advice.

Four rules for staff:

1. From launch day, nobody is handed a new paper card.
2. Every purchase is recorded on the Wallet Card for everyone who has joined.
3. A customer who still holds a paper card gets the paper stamp as well, until the last day.
4. A full paper card is exchanged for its free item as always, and staff keep the card.

Counting one purchase twice sounds expensive. It has a ceiling: the stamps still missing from the paper cards in use. No new cards go out, so that number only falls.

An example with made-up numbers. A café's paper card needs ten stamps. Staff see about 150 different paper cards in a fortnight, each with five stamps left to fill on average. Filling them puts 750 stamps on Wallet Cards that the café would not otherwise have given. On a card of ten that is 75 free drinks. At RM3 of ingredients a drink, the overlap costs at most about RM225, once.

For that, nobody loses a stamp and nobody has a reason to wait. The cheaper rule is one purchase, one stamp, on whichever card the customer picks. It costs nothing, and it tells every paper holder to put off joining until the paper card is full. If you choose it, staff must ask again on the day each full card is handed in.

Either way, record the purchase a customer is making as soon as the card is in their Wallet, so that nobody leaves with an empty one: see How soon should customers earn their first reward?

Four cases need a rule before launch day.

How long both run. Give a regular time to fill your paper card twice. If filling it takes them a month, run both for eight weeks. The café's 24.6 and 65 days point the same way, but that is one café: use your own pace. If the free item is taken on a later visit, publish two dates: the last day for a paper stamp, and a later last day to hand in a full card.

The card that is nearly full at the end. One simple rule: in the final week, a card within two stamps of full counts as full. Print it on the sign.

The full card that turns up late. It will happen. Decide now whether staff may honour it, and tell them.

The regular with no smartphone. A Wallet Card needs a phone with Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Tell those regulars yourself, before the sign goes up. Paper card, app or Wallet Card: which is best for you? shows how to count them first.

A thank-you that comes with membership. In Rewards And Benefits, add a Benefit and choose It comes with membership: "Every active member of the program has it." Set Claim and use by to the paper card's final day, so that it ends with the changeover. A member takes it on your Business page with Add to my rewards, and staff hand it over at the counter. Every member has it in that time, paper card or not: the product cannot tell them apart. native.cards checks its wording before members see it, so add it before launch day. Keep it small, an upsize or a pastry. It is a Benefit, not Stamps or Points: the new card still starts empty, and the Benefit does not replace their paper stamps.

The old number on their record. If your old card or app gave each member a number, tick Existing membership number in the join questions when you create the program: "A number your business has already given them." The customer types it as they join, and it shows on their record in Customers as "Membership no." It stores a number, not a balance, and nothing checks it against your old list. Its use is finding a member in that list when a question comes up. Tick it before you submit the program for review, because the form does not reopen once the program is approved.

A live program's earning rule cannot be changed either, so choose the number of stamps afresh. You need not copy the paper card's ten.

An app's balances can be read, but they cannot be loaded into native.cards either. Points divide where stamps do not, so the fair rule changes. This is practice. Nobody has measured it.

• From launch day, stop earning in the old app and record every purchase on the Wallet Card.
• Keep the old app's rewards open for claiming until the last day. If the old system allows it, add a small reward that a low balance can afford, so that nobody is left holding points that buy nothing.
• Announce the date and the join link through the old app's own messages while you still have them. Your new list starts empty and fills one member at a time.
• Before your access ends, export the member list and balances if your contract lets you, to answer questions at the counter afterwards. What else you may do with the list depends on the terms it was collected under: see Your members' personal data: what the law expects.

Money is a different matter. If the old app held credit, prepaid packages or gift cards that customers paid for, that is money you owe them. native.cards holds no stored value. Read Prepaid packages, store credit and gift cards: the rules and take advice before the old system closes.