In-store shopping isn’t going anywhere. Even as online sales grow, many people still buy snacks, drinks, cosmetics, and other everyday items at physical stores or from a retailer’s website.

According to the National Retail Federation, in-store shopping still accounts for over 70% of total U.S. retail sales across key consumer categories. These everyday purchases represent a major part of consumer behavior, but many brands have no visibility here.

For loyalty marketers, it means fewer customers are opting into their offers because there isn’t a convenient way for shoppers to show proof of purchase.

Subtotal solves this by offering a direct connection to merchant accounts. It gives you a simple way to verify purchases—online or in-store—so that you can deliver rewards with no added effort from your customers.

Loyalty data beyond D2C

Most modern loyalty programs are designed around brands’ D2C channels. They plug into digital storefronts, collect first-party data, and trigger rewards after an online order is placed. But they rarely reward users for retail purchases.

As soon as a shopper steps into a physical store, these loyalty programs become irrelevant. In-store purchases can only be linked back to the brand if the shopper goes out of their way to upload a receipt or manually enter a code found on the packaging.

So what does this mean? Missed reward opportunities for loyal customers, incomplete purchase histories for marketing and insights teams, and a poor loyalty experience that excludes most shoppers.

There are both data and brand implications to this disjointed experience. If loyal customers aren’t recognized or rewarded for their retail purchases, your loyalty program will feel outdated and inconsistent. When rewards introduce friction instead of removing it, participation drops off fast.

Why receipt uploads don't scale

In an attempt to capture in-store purchases, some brands allow customers to upload receipts in exchange for rewards. While this may seem like a reasonable workaround, it introduces new problems.

Customers have to remember to keep their receipts, take photos of them, and upload them through a brand’s app or send them via text. The processing takes time and is often error-prone. Receipts fade, get lost, or don’t include the level of detail needed for item-level validation. On the backend, these uploads need to be reviewed, verified, and often corrected, creating a costly support burden for brands. The verification piece becomes increasingly important as visual Gen AI tools make it easy to mock up a fraudulent receipt in seconds.

We built a way to remove the friction

Subtotal allows your customers to share their retail purchases with you directly by linking their retail accounts to your app or website. Once linked, any eligible purchases tied to the account, whether online or in-store, are automatically recognized and sent back to you or your loyalty provider.

That means:

• Customers don’t have to change how they shop or interact with the loyalty program
• You get access to real-time, item-level purchase data from physical and digital retail channels
• The loyalty experience becomes seamless, unified, and easier to scale

Rewards happen in the background with little to no friction introduced. Automation that benefits both you and your customers.

Applications across industries

This capability is especially helpful for brands in high-volume product categories, where everyday purchases are frequent but may be difficult to track (and reward):

CPG: Most snack, beverage, beauty, and wellness products are purchased in-store. Subtotal enables these brands to get first-party data from consumers and recognize purchases for rewards automatically, creating a more complete view of consumer loyalty behavior.

QSR: These brands often have loyalty apps tied to direct orders. But when food is ordered through third-party platforms like DoorDash or Uber Eats, those purchases don’t always count. Subtotal can help link those delivery accounts and tie them back to the loyalty program.

Personal finance and commerce tools: Apps that track spending or make product recommendations benefit from access to real purchase data. Subtotal offers a clean, scalable way to feed this information into their systems without complex integrations with each retailer.

Ready to get started with merchant account linking?

Sign up for Subtotal today. Book a demo with our team for personalized support.

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