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AppCard

AppCard is a comprehensive rewards and marketing engine that drives customer loyalty for independent grocers, including many shared Instacart partners. It simplifies customer retention by combining personalization with digital coupons and AI-driven insights. AppCard empowers retailers to segment their customers effectively and deliver targeted, automated campaigns that increase basket size and lifetime value. For more information about segments, see Create a segment.

What the AppCard integration offers​

When AppCard integrates with Instacart, the following features are enabled:

  • Automated synchronization of promotions across platforms that ensures consistent promotions.
  • Advanced merchandising that tags sale items with promotional badges and displays progressive reward trackers for customer engagement.
  • Enhanced transaction reconciliation that tracks online orders linked to in-store purchases and consolidates reports.

How AppCard integrations work​

Instacart's internal discounting engine powers Instacart Marketplace and Storefront Pro sites. To enable standard offer merchandising and application on your e-commerce site, the Instacart Discounting Platform ingests and maps offers from AppCard With this integration, Instacart can handle both item and basket-level discounts through the Discounting Platform. For more information about the Discounting Platform, see Discounting Platform.

Customer accounts are linked to loyalty features either through AppCard or through Instacart single sign-on (SSO). For more information about single sign-on, see Retailer single sign-on.

note

Only offer types supported by the Discounting Platform can be mapped and surfaced to customers.

Instacart processes AppCard promotions in the following sequence:

  1. Promotion creation and ingestion. Instacart ingests promotions from your AppCard implementation. Promotions are mapped to Instacart's supported promotion types.
  2. Shopping. Relevant item-level promotions are merchandised on item cards and product detail pages. In the cart, completed item‑level promotions are displayed so customers can confirm which discounts were applied. A progress tracker with incomplete promotions will prompt customers to complete them.
  3. Promotion evaluation. Promotions are preloaded from AppCard and evaluated by Instacart to reduce latency.
  4. Promotion reconciliation. At checkout, the Instacart shopper or store associate scans a "MagicLink" to connect the online order to the point of sale (POS) transaction. AppCard is notified of any promotions redeemed by a customer to minimize spread. When the order is completed, Instacart pings AppCard to check if the promotions are still valid. If they are, the promotions and coupons are used.
note

Expired coupons can't be used.

MagicLink is a unique identification (ID), which lets AppCard link online and in-store transactions, reconcile payments, and flag discrepancies. Once the order is fulfilled, it applies discounts, processes coupons, and updates loyalty points.

Based on an AppCard-assigned preset range, Instacart generates this ID when the online order is placed and passes it to AppCard along with the order information. At the in-store checkout, the Instacart shopper or store associate displays this MagicLink on the Instacart Shopper app. AppCard uses the scanned barcode to automatically match the transaction at the POS with the correct online order.

Once AppCard identifies the order as an Instacart transaction, it collects the offer redemptions and order details using an application programming interface (API) to ensure the POS transaction is tied to the correct online context.

Supported offers with AppCard​

AppCard supports the following offers:

  • Cents off
  • Cents off price/lb
  • Percent off
  • Fixed price
  • Fixed price/lb
  • Spend $X on basket, get $Y off (or % off)
  • Spend $X of product A, get $Y off
  • Buy one get one (BOGO)
  • Buy X get Y% off
  • Buy N of one item, get an item free
  • Promo code at checkout.

Offers are created using Instacart Platform Portal. For more information, see Campaigns and offers.

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