Introduction to Loyalty Tiers

Loyalty Tiers are designed to reward customers progressively as they demonstrate ongoing loyalty engagement, spend, or visit frequency. They create exclusivity and motivate customers to increase their activity to unlock better rewards.

Customers are grouped into levels (e.g. Bronze, Silver, and Gold). Each level carries specific benefits, and movement between levels is determined by predefined rules.

Consider how a client would use tiers as part of their loyalty program:

Bronze >> Silver >> Gold

Customers are entered into the Bronze tier upon joining the loyalty program
- In the default Bronze tier, customers earn 1 point for every $1.00 spent
The next tier level of Silver is achieved after a 1,000 points have been credited to the tier membership
- The Silver tier incentivizes customers with unlocking new offers
The highest tier, Gold, is earned after a 2,500 points have been achieved
The Gold tier is the most rewarding, giving customers the richest offers in the rewards program

Loyalty Tier Setup

Tiers can be setup via the dashboard or API. This section will define the key elements of the API POST payload for a three tier setup. After each tier is created, PUT calls will be needed to update the promotion and demotion tierIds as needed.

See the Loyalty Tiers Recipe for a step-by-step guide on creating and managing tiers, along with the prerequisites needed to get started.

Promotion Rule Set

Each tier (except the highest) has a promotion rule set which defines how customers move to the next tier: Bronze to Silver or Silver to Gold, based on tier points earned, number of transactions, or amount spent. And/or conditions can be set for the promotion rules to customize the promotion ruleset.

Examples of the and/or conditions to define promotion rules include:

Earn 1,000 Points
Earn 1,000 Points OR Spend $500
Earn 1,000 Points AND complete 25 Transactions

As transactions are settled, POS Connect will update tier membership balances and promote customers to higher tiers as they become eligible. Using our example above, if Gemma has a tier membership with 850 tier points (Bronze tier) and makes a purchase rewarding him with 200 tier points, when the transaction is settled, she will be progressed to the Silver tier.

Overrides

Each tier level gives the option to override the associated scheme's Base Earn amount. This will override the number of points set as the Base Earn if the consumer is in a given tier. An example would be the base loyalty points scheme is set up with an earn rate of 1 point per $1.00 spent. For higher tiers, such as Gold, you may want to increase the Base Earn rate, by awarding Gold tier customers 2 points per $1.00 spent.

Another override option is the ability to change the scheme's Points Expiry rules per tier. This feature will override the Points Expiry set on a Scheme if the consumer is in a given tier. As an example, customers in the default lowest level tier may have points expiring at the end of the sixth month on the last day, however Gold tier customers can have a 12-month expiry rule instead, offering them more time to spend their points.

Tier Review & Balance Reset

Each tier (outside of the default, lowest tier) has a set of customizable rules that determine when customers will be evaluated and what will happen to their tier membership at the end of the membership period.

Two key elements of the tier setup is when the membership expires and the tier membership balance is reset back to zero.

Membership Expiry Period: Date when a customer’s tier is reassessed, and
Balance Reset Period: Date when balances are reset to zero for a fresh cycle.

These values can be configured by selecting a period offset. The period offset is the number of days, weeks, months or years after the tier membership creation date, used to set the expiration date.

Absolute Date

The Absolute Date is when tier membership will expire and be up for evaluation exactly x days, weeks, months or years after it is created. Consider an example where the tier membership is set to expire 6 months exactly after creation:

Example A: Gemma joins the loyalty program on April, 12 2026. Her tier membership will be evaluated and the balance reset on October 12, 2026
Example B: Rob joins the loyalty program on May 5, 2026. His tier membership will be evaluated and the balance reset on November 5, 2026.

Rounding Rules

Additionally, instead of having random tier membership expiration dates throughout the year, you may want to extend tier membership until the last day of a predefined period. This is where rounding rules can be applied to round the membership expiry date and evaluation period to the:

End of the month
End of the quarter (March 31, June 30, September 30 or December 31)
End of the half year (June 30)
End of the year (December 31)

Here are some examples of the impact of rounding rules to tier membership expiry and evaluation dates for a tier membership that were created on March 14, 2026, where the period is 6 months.

Rounding Rule	Membership Expiry Date
Absolute	September 9, 2026
End of Month	September 30, 2026
End of Quarter	September 30, 2026
End of Half	December 31, 2026
End of Year	December 31, 2026

If the rounding rule was 1 year, here is the impact for the same tier membership creation date of March 14, 2026.

Rounding Rule	Membership Expiry Date
Absolute	March 14, 2027
End of Month	March 31, 2027
End of Quarter	March 31, 2027
End of Half	June 30, 2027
End of Year	December 31, 2027

Tier Membership

As customers are enrolled into a tier, a tier membership is created in their wallet. This acts as the container that holds all tier-related data for an individual. The tier membership is created at the same time as the points account. Only one tier membership can be assigned to a loyalty points account.

Tier memberships tracks balances using tier points, spend or transactions:

Points: points earned in a Tier Period to track towards any Tier Promotions
Spend: amount of Spend (Basket Value, after discounts) in a Tier Period to track towards any Tier Promotions
Transactions: count of transactions in a Tier Period

Earning Tier Points

Points are earned in the tier memberships from eligible campaigns. Points campaigns have a fixed reward value based on the product or basket qualifying spend. To match that number of points to be rewarded in the tier membership, the campaign can be set to match that value. Alternatively the campaign can reward a different set of points to the tier membership when the offer is redeemed.

Campaign Integration

To help incentives higher tier promotion, campaigns can be limited to only allow redemption for customers in specific tiers. This allows brands to create tier-exclusive promotions and rewards.

Campaigns can target specific tiers (e.g., “Silver-only offer” or “Silver + Gold only”)
Contributions to tier balances (Points, Spend, Transactions) can be configured within campaign rule

Real-world example:
A retailer may run a double-points campaign only for Silver members, encouraging Bronze customers to progress.

Key Terminology

Term	Description
Tier Membership	A customer is given a “membership” to a tier and that membership gets set to the relevant tier level depending on their progress. The membership holds the details of the balances for the tiers.
Tier Membership Transaction	A tier transaction is a set of changes made against a customer's tier. A transaction can be one of CREDIT, DEBIT, ADJUST or MOVE.
Promotion Rule Sets	Promotion Rule Sets define the conditions a customer must meet to move up to a higher loyalty tier. These are sets of rules based on points credited.
Membership Expiry	A scheduled moment when AIR evaluates which tier each customer should belong to for the upcoming period, and then resets their tracked points balance. This is the date when AIR checks a customer’s progress towards the promotion rule sets to decide whether they stay in their current tier or get demoted to a lower tier.
Balance Reset	This is when the system zeros out balances so customers start accumulating tier-qualifying activity for the next period. This should take place on the same date of the membership expiry.
Tier Scheme Overrides	Settings applied to specific tiers, allowing businesses to override the standard rules set at the scheme level. This can be used for changing how many points are earned per £ spent or adjusting how long points remain valid.
Period Offset	Determines how long the customer stays in the tier before it is up for review and the balance is reset. It starts when the tier membership is created.
Rounding Rule	While the tier membership expiry date can be an absolute date in the future based on the period offset (exactly 6 months from the tier membership create date), an optional and commonly used rule can be set to align the tier membership expiry date to a business calendar boundary, such as end of the month,end of the quarter, end of the half-year, or end of the year.