Why Keeping Your Customers' Change Pays

Every shop owner in Zimbabwe has done the sums on the sweet jar. A sweet costs a few cents, the customer was owed seventy, the shop is ahead. Except the customer knows exactly what just happened, and a shop that is seventy cents ahead and one customer poorer has not come out ahead at all.

Marii Cards is a different answer to the same till. The change you cannot give stays in your till, recorded on a card in the customer's name, and it comes back to you as a sale. The money never leaves your shop. Marii keeps the record.

Three taps, while the queue moves

At the till your cashier taps the amount, the customer's number, and confirm. That is the whole thing. The customer gets a text before they have left the counter saying what was recorded and what you now owe them in total. If you hand them a card in your shop's name, it works at your till with a PIN even if they never install the app.

What any one customer can be owed is capped at ten dollars, so it stays what it is: change, not a debt book.

That change comes back. So does the customer.

The change belongs to the shop that kept it. A customer holding seventy cents with you cannot spend it at the shop next door, and that seventy cents is the most reliable reason they have to walk past the shop next door. When they do, they show one pay code or their card and PIN, and it comes off the bill. Most people spend more than the amount on the card once they are in.

Talk to the people who already shop with you

Every customer you owe change to has given you their number and a reason to hear from you. If they say yes at your till, you can send them your weekend special or new stock as a poster in their app, and now and then as a text. They can switch you off at any time, which is exactly why the ones who stay on are worth talking to. It is the opposite of paying to reach strangers.

Stamp cards and cashback run on the same card. No paper to lose, and the customer can see where they stand without asking.

Built so your customers trust it

Customers will only leave their change with you if they believe they will get it back, so the protection is in how it is built. The money stays in your till, and the record of who is owed what sits with Marii, where neither side can quietly change it. Only the customer can spend what is on their card: a pay code made on their own phone, or their card plus their PIN. A number alone can never spend. Every spend sends them a text. A lost card is blocked at every till at once and what was on it moves to a new one. Reversals at your till need a manager's PIN. You see all of it in your Marii dashboard, next to your invoices.

What it costs

One yearly price for your shop, by shop size, with the cards, the texts and the till software included. There are no per-sale fees. Branded cards with your own name on the front, and tap cards, are quoted on top if you want them.

Marii Cards for shops: how it works, pricing and questions →