Wallet notifications or texts: what each one costs

Half the counter is still full, or tomorrow morning has three empty slots. You know exactly what you want to say, and you know that one message would bring a handful of people back tonight. That leaves the daft question: which channel, and at what price?

There are two answers. The text message, which everyone knows, billed per message. And the notification that lands on the loyalty card already sitting in your customer's phone. Both turn up on the same lock screen. Financially, they are two different worlds.

Here is the comparison done with the published rates of UK and Irish text providers, the arithmetic said out loud, and the part the sales pages leave out: what a text does better.

Text platforms publish their rates, and they all work the same way: the more credits you buy at once, the less each one costs.

• FireText, in the UK: 500 credits for £25, so 5p a credit, prices excluding VAT. Their own note is worth reading: a marketing message usually takes 2 credits per recipient, because it runs past 160 characters once the opt-out line is in.
• Sendmode: in the UK, 4.3p a credit from 1,000 to 5,000 credits, 4p from 10,000, 3.6p from 25,000. In Ireland, 1,000 credits for €55, 2,500 for €135, 5,000 for €265.

Two things to hold on to. First, these are the advertised rates, before VAT where the provider says so. Second, the discounts are built for volume. A high street shop sending a few hundred messages a month stays parked at the top of the table, where a text costs the most.

Take a business that is doing well: 600 customers on the list, one message a month. At 4.3p a credit that send costs £25.80 excluding VAT, or £30 at 5p a credit. In Ireland, at the 1,000 credit rate of 5.5c, the same send is €33. And if your wording needs two credits, double it.

Move to two messages a month, which is still restrained, and you are at 1,200 credits a month, 14,400 across the year. At 4p that is around £576 excluding VAT, near enough £691 once VAT is added. In Ireland, at the 5,000 credit rate of 5.3c, roughly €763.

And that money buys one thing: delivery. It does not include the loyalty card, the dashboard or the scan at the till. The software is paid for separately.

The problem is not the unit price, which is fair enough. The problem is which way the meter turns. Every newly loyal customer adds a line to the bill. Go from 300 to 900 cardholders, so your programme is working three times better, and the same message costs you three times more.

What follows is mechanical: you hesitate. You skip the win back for people who have not been in for two months, because there are 180 of them and that is another eight pounds. You save your sends for the big occasions. The channel still exists, but you have stopped using it.

Then there is the legal side. In the UK, regulation 22 of PECR means marketing texts to individuals need consent, with the soft opt-in for someone who bought or negotiated to buy a similar product from you, provided you gave them a simple way to opt out when you took their details and in every message since. In Ireland the 2011 ePrivacy Regulations work the same way, and the existing customer exemption runs out twelve months after the sale. Consent or not, you slowly build a list of numbers, and you pay every time you speak to it.

The Wallet notification answers the same question a different way. The message is not sent to a number, it lands on the loyalty card your customer added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. No credits to buy, no cost per message, no cost per customer.

At Digikart these notifications come with the Pro plan, €49 incl. VAT a month or €490 a year, no commitment. Billing is in euros: at the European Central Bank reference rate of 17 September 2026, that is roughly £42 a month and £420 a year. The price is the same with 200 customers and with 5,000. The plan also covers flash deals that expire on their own at the date you set, win backs for inactive customers, the birthday reward, the nearby notification, statistics with CSV export, staff accounts and the till connection.

Back to that business, 600 customers and two messages a month. By text: around £576 excluding VAT a year of delivery in the UK, about €763 in Ireland, plus the software. On the card: €490 for the year, software included, send as often as you like. The detail is on the unlimited notifications page, and the full prices on the pricing page.

Let us say it plainly: the text keeps three advantages the notification will never have.

• It reaches everyone. If you have the number, the message arrives, including to the customer who never added your card and on a phone with no Wallet. The notification only speaks to cardholders.
• It stays put. A text sits in the message thread. Your customer finds it again on Saturday morning, with your address and your opening hours in it.
• It works beyond loyalty. Appointment reminders, an order ready to collect, closing for refurbishment: these are service messages, often sent to people who are not in your programme at all.

Digikart does not send texts, and that is a choice. If your trade needs them, a salon confirming appointments for instance, keeping an account with a text provider alongside makes perfect sense. The two do not contradict each other.

The dividing line fits in one sentence. Whatever comes round every week goes on the card: today's deal, the reminder that a reward is two stamps away, the win back for sleeping customers, the birthday. Frequent messages, sent to a lot of people, which are exactly the ones that inflate a text bill.

Whatever is rare and individual can stay a text: tomorrow's appointment, the order waiting to be collected. Few messages, well aimed, at a cost that stays trivial.

Before you sign anywhere, ask three questions. Are campaigns billed per message? Is the number of customers capped? And above all, what do I pay in a year if my list doubles? If the answer to the last one is "double", you are not buying a loyalty tool, you are renting a meter. The rest of the numbers are in what a loyalty card really costs and in the FAQ.