A punch card is a paper or cardboard loyalty card that staff mark with a hole punch, usually one that cuts a distinctive shape such as a star, a heart or a coffee cup. Each hole stands for one visit or purchase, and a card with every space punched earns the reward printed on it. In everyday speech "punch card" and "stamp card" mean the same thing, and customers will ask for either. The only real difference is the tool: a punch leaves no ink to smudge, which is why car washes, ice creameries and market stalls with wet benches have long preferred it.
Its weak points are the ones every paper card shares. It has to be carried, it goes through the wash, and it tells the shop nothing, because the record leaves the building in the customer's pocket. A shaped punch is also easy to copy: a craft punch from a newsagent can turn a half-full card into a full one in a few seconds.
In practice
A hand car wash gives out punch cards with eight spaces and a free exterior wash, priced at $22, as the reward. Across a year it hands out 1,200 cards. When the owner counts the full cards handed back, there are 90, so only 7.5 percent of cards ever reached the reward. Many of the other 1,110 were not new customers at all but regulars who lost a half-punched card and started a fresh one, which means the wash was printing cards for the same people over and over.
If 20 of those 90 full cards were finished with a borrowed punch, the wash gave away $440 of washes at menu price. The true cost in water, chemicals and labour is a good deal less, but the bigger loss is the regulars who gave up after losing a card on punch six.
In Counter Club
There is no card to punch. The count lives against the member's mobile number, and one press of Stamp on their row does the job of one hole, so there is nothing to leave in a glovebox and nothing to forge. See the stamp card.