Keep your regulars. Meet everyone else's.

What it costs

One flat monthly fee per shop, from the day you start. No free trial, because we would rather you judged it on whether it works than on whether it is free, and because a scheme that pays shops for pouring free coffees has to be funded from the start.

• £19 a month per shop. The same figure for every shop in the network.
• Founding shops keep that price. Join while the network is being built and your fee is fixed for two years, whatever it goes to later.
• No commission. We take nothing from your sales.
• No card machine changes. anybean sits beside your till, not inside it.
• No contract length. A month's notice, any time. Your customers keep the beans they collected with you.

The fee covers the app, the cards, your shop's page, the monthly statement and the settlement that pays you for the free coffees you pour. What it does not cover is the coffee itself, and that is the next section.

Who pays for the free coffee

This is the question every owner asks, and it deserves a straight answer. If someone collects nine beans in a shop across town and takes the free coffee from you, you have given away a coffee that somebody else sold the loyalty for. That would be a bad deal, so it is not how it works.

Every bean records the shop that gave it. When a customer takes their free coffee, the ten beans behind it are traced back, oldest first, to the shops that issued them. Those shops pay the shop that poured it.

• Every free coffee is worth £1.50 to the shop that pours it, whichever shop that is, paid by the shops that gave the ten beans behind it.
• You are paid for pouring, and you pay when your customers drink elsewhere. For most shops these two roughly cancel out.
• Once a month you get a statement showing every bean and every free coffee, and one payment in or out.
• Nothing is charged when a bean is issued, only when a coffee is actually handed over. Beans sitting on cards cost you nothing.

What a month looks like

Five shops, a few months in, when roughly one coffee in six involves a card. These are illustrative shops, not real ones.

Shop	Beans given	Free coffees poured	Net
Busy destination cafe	2,000	105	pays £65
All-day cafe bar	1,600	150	paid £35
Brunch spot	1,400	95	pays £18
Town centre coffee house	1,100	120	paid £48
Village shop	900	70	level

The shop that pays the most is the one whose customers collect beans and spend them elsewhere: it bought a month of loyalty from people who kept coming back, for less than an afternoon's takings. The shops that get paid are the ones people walk into to claim a free coffee, and they usually sell something to eat alongside it.

Questions we get

Will my regulars start drinking somewhere else?

Some of them will try the shop down the road, and that shop's regulars will try you. That is the point of a network, and the settlement means you are paid when it happens. If you would rather not be in a scheme with the shop next door, this is not for you and we would rather know now.

Does it slow the queue down?

One scan and one tap. It is quicker than finding the right paper card and the stamp.

I already have a loyalty card.

Keep it. Plenty of shops will run both for a while. If anybean earns its place, the paper one quietly disappears.

What happens to my customers' details?

We hold a first name, and an email address only if the customer chooses to add one so their beans survive a new phone. Shops see a first name at the counter and nothing else. Shops never see each other's customers, we never sell anything to anybody, and we do not market to your customers without their say so.

What if I want out?

Tell us, and you are out at the end of the month. Your shop comes off the map and the app, and the beans your customers collected with you stay theirs to spend elsewhere.

What if I am the first shop to join?

Then for a while the card works like an ordinary loyalty card that happens to live in your customers' phones, and it gets more useful every time a neighbour joins. We are signing a cluster at a time for exactly that reason, and we will tell you honestly who else has said yes.