Square Loyalty is the loyalty add-on Square offers to merchants running Square POS. It's tightly integrated with the payment terminal, simple to turn on, and cheap. Habitu is a guest growth platform for multi-location restaurant brands that need segmentation, branded apps, campaign automation, and deep guest data, regardless of which POS they're on. Here's when each one is the right call.
What Square Loyalty gets right
Integration with Square POS. If you're already running Square, Square Loyalty switches on with minimal config. Points accrue at checkout, redemption is at the terminal, no middleware.
Price. Banded per location, per month, on loyalty visits: A$49/A$99/A$149 in Australia, C$60/C$100/C$140 in Canada, per Square's own loyalty pages retrieved 27 August 2026. In the US, loyalty has not been sold on its own since October 2025 — it is bundled into Square Plus at $49/month per location. Cheap for a one-location operation.
Operational simplicity. No separate login for staff, no separate tablet. It's a toggle in Square Dashboard.
Where Square Loyalty falls short for growing brands
Points only, no real segmentation. Square Loyalty counts stars (visits) and offers rewards. There's no RFM, no behavioural segments, no "champions vs at-risk vs dormant", just a visit counter and a reward.
No branded app. Rewards live in the Square merchant experience or a receipt-driven SMS flow. There's no standalone customer app with your logo, your menu, your ordering.
Limited campaigns. Square Marketing (a separate product) handles email blasts, but triggered campaigns, automated win-backs, and segment-targeted pushes are not in the out-of-the-box toolkit.
POS lock-in. Square Loyalty only works if you're on Square POS. Most serious UAE and GCC restaurant brands are on Foodics, which rules out Square Loyalty entirely.
No direct ordering. Square has online ordering for the US; it isn't live or mature across the GCC. Every order stays inside the POS, not inside a branded channel you control.
What Habitu adds
POS-agnostic. Works with Foodics, Square, Toast, Lightspeed, and others. Whatever POS you run, Habitu reads the transaction data and builds the guest profile.
Real segmentation. RFM-driven behavioural segments, re-scored nightly, targetable in campaigns.
Branded apps. Your own iOS and Android app, your own push channel, your own direct-ordering funnel. Not a Square receipt.
Campaign automation. Behaviour-triggered, attributed by segment, with cohort reporting. In-app inbox and email send today; push and SMS compose and preview but do not dispatch yet.
Multi-brand + multi-location. Unified guest identity across brands in the same group, regional rollups, per-location performance analytics.
Side by side
POS integration: Square Loyalty, only Square. Habitu , Foodics, Square, Toast, and more.
Segmentation: Square Loyalty, none beyond points. Habitu, RFM + six behavioural segments.
Branded app: Square Loyalty, no. Habitu, yes.
Direct ordering: Square Loyalty, limited, US only. Habitu, native.
Campaign automation: Square Loyalty, limited. Habitu , full behavioural automation.
Price: Square Loyalty, banded per location per month by loyalty visits (A$49–A$149 in Australia, C$60–C$140 in Canada); in the US it is bundled into Square Plus at $49/month per location. Habitu, mid-market, designed for 3-50 location chains.
Who should pick which
Pick Square Loyalty if: you run 1 location on Square POS, in the US, and you want a simple points program that lives at the terminal.
Pick Habitu if: you run 3+ locations (on any POS), you want guest-level segmentation, you need a branded app or direct-ordering channel, and you're in a market where Foodics is the dominant POS.
For a deeper look at how POS choice shapes the loyalty decision, read Foodics vs Square: POS + loyalty in the UAE.