The LoyLap Story

Founders Conor O’Toole and Patrick Garry observed how larger physical presence retailers were starting to use technology to digitally transform their businesses. Having studied together, the two founders recognized that while the vast majority of peoples discretionary spends were with micro and small businesses, these businesses did not have the budget to hire internal technologists or consultants to help them compete with their larger rivals. This was the germ of the idea for LoyLap. A platform that levelled the playing field and made technology previously reserved for retail giants, available to all retailers of all sizes.

LoyLap released its first offering in 2013; a mobile app for merchants that enabled them to scan a QR code on the customers’ LoyLap Member app and reward them with a digital stamp or digital points for each purchase. 

The app was well received, and although it was cumbersome and costly to have a second piece of hardware in conjunction with the POS, merchants saw the value it brought to their customers and business. They noted how customers much preferred to engage with a mobile loyalty system than get yet another physical loyalty card. This gave LoyLap the impetus to continue.

Recognizing that LoyLap’s biggest barrier to scale was the separate piece of hardware required in conjunction with the POS to run the software, the team started to look for POS partners that shared their vision. An open integrated POS system that enabled third parties to develop apps to enhance the experience for their mutual customer. And in 2014 LoyLap discovered Clover; an emerging POS system founded a few years earlier in California. 

LoyLap integrated directly with Clover POS and now separate hardware was no longer required. LoyLap could now be downloaded as an app on thousands of POS systems in four countries.

Shortly after the integration with Clover, LoyLap founders noticed that merchants were looking for more than just a loyalty system. They didn’t want to have to have relationships with several companies in order to facilitate all of their customer interactions. They wanted to be able to see and engage with all of their customers in one platform. With this in mind, LoyLap developed a physical and digital gift card solution that worked in harmony with its loyalty system, providing further functionality for merchants. 

Having created a powerful mobile wallet with integrated advanced loyalty functionality and the ability to link contactless cards, it was observed that LoyLap had all the hallmarks to enter the cashless facilities payments market. This would enable employees to load funds to their digital wallet to spend in their employment facility via their staff card. 

Seeing this market as a standalone business opportunity, Facilipay was created as LoyLap’s sister company to power customization payments in some of the world’s most advanced and secure facilities. This allowed LoyLap to stick to its core mission of digitizing physical presence SMEs and micro businesses.

Facilipay customers wanted a way for their staff members to make purchases after hours, once catering staff had gone home. There was also a need for a self-service kiosk to enable customers to check out without any need for an employee at the kiosk. With this in mind, LoyLap developed a multi-purpose self-checkout product fully integrated with LoyLap’s loyalty and gift card software for catering and general retail customers. 

After self-service kiosks, attention moved to LoyLap’s biggest consumer demand at the time; online ordering. 

Merchants were used to online ordering options from the major players in the space but were finding their fees crippling and business practices questionable; such as one player keeping rider tips as their own revenue. They were also tired of being given yet another kitchen printer or tablet to receive the order. 

LoyLap solved this with its own ordering platform Order Ahead; built for merchants first. Fully integrated to their POS to avoid end of day reconciliation, and with fees starting at between 2% and 3%, LoyLap offers yet another product as part of the LoyLap technology stack providing incredible value to merchants instantly.

Now with seven years experience in the loyalty, payments and customer engagement space, LoyLap knew a thing or two about what the market wanted from a loyalty system; the answer was there was no one size fits all solution. Small businesses are incredibly dynamic, agile and unique. Consequently, what worked for one merchant was unlikely to work perfectly for another. 

As a result, LoyLap set out to enhance its loyalty offering tenfold, with a new hyper dynamic campaigns functionality to let merchants set their loyalty program in a way that works for their business. Loyalty isn’t about just giving X back to the customer after they do Y, it’s about building a relationship and making the customer feel valued at all times. Campaigns achieves this by letting businesses write the rules of their loyalty system with incredible flexibility and precision.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, there was never a more appropriate time for LoyLap’s technology. 

Order Ahead online ordering helped our merchants keep the doors open for collections when customers were not allowed inside. We built gift.loylap.com to allow people buy vouchers to support their favorite business and help them weather the storm.

No longer able to visit merchants in person, LoyLap took the opportunity while the team was working remotely, to rebuild the customer experience making it easier to get started. In addition, there was massive enhancement to the API enabling rapid and easy integration with hundreds of POS systems.