Inner Circle

An enhanced shared partner loyalty program. A partner program is a group of Square sellers and customers can earn and redeem points from any of the stores collectively.

Comment

Inner Circle - An application for Square ;)

Inner Circle ⭕️ uses Square's native Loyalty services to create an enhanced group loyalty program while maintaining each store's individual loyalties.

What This App Can Do for a Seller

  • By creating an enhanced loyalty program, you can give a customer more options to redeem their points
  • A shared Loyalty system will encourage a customer to return to your store
  • By bringing in more stores, customers will redeem their points from multiple stores, rather than redeeming it all from your store
  • It can give incentive to small businesses to compete with large corporations with various stores

Security and Flexibility

  • Your store can easily leave a program and it will not affect your current loyalty program
  • Nothing besides the added/redeemed points will be shared with other stores

  • Circle will only update existing customers in your store and not add external ones

    • You can check where point changes for a customer by clicking on their profile
    • it will show which store updated your customer's points and by how much

  • You can set up a conversion ratio between your partner points and yours giving you the option to choose what's best for your store

For the User

How to Get Started

Step 1: Authorizing Circle
  • easily authorize Circle with a few clicks to enrol
Step 2: Creating or Joining a Partner Program

after integrating with Circle, you can easily create a program by giving it a name or join a program

  • Any Square seller with an active Loyalty program can authorize this app to create a Partner Program
  • Other Square sellers can join a Partner Program via a Partner Id
Step 3: Monitor and modify your program

after step 2, you can view your loyalty statistics from the app:

  • View your instore and external points
  • Change your point conversion ratio
  • See the participating stores and invite others
  • Leave the partner program ## How it Works

Under the hood, Circle uses

  • Square's MerchantsAPI, LoyaltyAPI, CustomersAPI, oAuthAPI
  • Firebase's Cloud functions for the backend written in Typescript
  • Firebase's Firestore as a database to store and fetch data relevant to the programs and sellers
  • A React Client and MaterialUI for the web application hosted on Firebase

Authentication

Each user is authenticated via Square's Authentication. The app will receive an authorization code and the backend server will Call the oAuth API to get an access token

Creating or joining a Partner Program

After initiating create/join a program, the backend will create a collection in FireStore uniquely created for that user and store the user's program information.

  • if a user is already in a program it will direct them there

Leaving a Partner Program

  • Circle will use the stores' info to delete the store's information from Firestore
  • it will not affect the store's own loyalty program
  • any future changes to the partner program will not be applied to the store
  • other participating stores will not lose their statistics or program; but only have one less store in their program
  • if no store is left in a program, Circle will delete the program

Behind the scenes' Flow

Customer interaction with a store

  1. Every time a customer buys something or redeems a reward, Square will send a webhook in response to the loyalty event to Circle.

  2. Circle uses Square's LoyaltyAPI to find customer's id and then the CustomersAPI to find the customers number

  • if the event type is redeem, Circle will use the reward id and the LoyaltyAPI to find the points for that reward
  1. Circle will go over the partner program collection in firestore and use the MerchantAPI to find all the partner stores

  • Then it uses the CutomersAPI to find the customer with the matching number and if found their loyalty account id

  • using LoyaltyAPI's adjust points, Circle increments or decrements the customer's point for the other stores based on the conversion ratio for each store and set a message to track for each seller

  • Lastly, will update firestore with the changed points

Dashboard
  1. Circle will fetch the program from Firestore based on the user's credentials
    • Partner stores
    • Points applied internally or externally

Challenges I ran into

  • using the proper webhooks and preventing multiple calls
  • efficiently keeping track of changes in the database

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • working with Square’s APIs and webhooks for the first time
  • Ideating, developing and submitting a project altogether
  • Using Premiere Pro for the first time

What I learned

  • User authentication
  • Using Square Developer platform and APIs: Loyalty, Customers
  • MaterialUI
  • FireStore

What's next for Inner Circle

  • more features: customer groups, more intricate reward programs
  • cycle-based (short-term) loyalty programs

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history