PackPerks · PackBack Network
A loyalty programme for people who will never download your app.
A rewards programme for returning reusable cups, designed around one hard rule: no app and no sign-up. Your contactless card is the account, and progress lives in your phone's wallet.
- Role
- Product Lead, lead designer
- Company
- PackBack Network
- Timeline
- May to Sep 2026
- Team
- 1 product designer, 2 engineers, payments partner, marketing lead
- Platforms
- Mobile web, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, SmartBin screens, Card terminals
1Your card is your account, no sign-up
2Progress you can see from the lock screen
3One tap adds it to Wallet, no app download needed
+7.1 pts
Return rate at the six pilot locations
38%
Of returners who opened their perks page
61%
Of those added the wallet pass
0
Accounts, passwords or app downloads needed
The problem
PackBack wanted a reason for people to bring cups back beyond the €1 deposit. Every loyalty idea on the table needed an app or an account, and PackBack's whole promise to consumers is 'no apps, no sign-up'.
What I did
I designed PackPerks around the card people already tap: returns are linked to a tokenised card ID, progress shows on a web page and a wallet pass, and perks are redeemed by tapping the same card. Then I ran a 12-week pilot at six locations.
What changed
Return rate at pilot locations went up 7.1 points against comparable locations. More than a third of returners looked at their perks, most of those added the wallet pass, and nobody had to create an account.
01 · Context
A promise we didn't want to break.
PackBack tells consumers they don't need an app or an account to borrow a cup. It's one of the main reasons people try it. But the deposit alone wasn't enough to bring every cup back, especially takeaway cups that leave the building.
Marketing wanted a loyalty programme. The obvious version, an app with points, would have broken the promise on day one. So the brief became a constraint: rewards that work with nothing but the payment card someone already has in their hand.
02 · Problem
Every loyalty pattern assumes an account.
I reviewed 15 loyalty programmes from coffee chains, supermarkets and transit cards. All of them identify you with an app, an account or a physical card. None of those work for a cup you borrowed once at a station.
PackBack app with points
The standard answer. In a survey of 600 users, 72% said they would not install an app for this. It also broke our main promise.
Email sign-up at the machine
Tried at one location for two weeks. Typing an email on a bin's touchscreen was slow, and only 4% did it.
The payment card is the account
Returns already link to the card that paid the deposit. A tokenised card ID becomes the account, with a web page and wallet pass to see progress.
The question we worked on
How might we reward people for returning cups when we don't know who they are, and they don't want us to?
03 · Research
What makes people come back with a cup.
Together with our marketing lead, I ran a survey with 600 people who had used PackBack, 18 short interviews at three locations, and a review of what happens to cups after they leave the building.
Small, close rewards beat big, distant ones
A free coffee after 10 returns was more motivating than a €5 voucher after 25. People wanted to see the finish line.
“Ten I can do. Fifty, I'll forget.”
People forget, they don't refuse
Most unreturned cups sat in a bag or on a desk. People meant to return them. A reminder at the right moment mattered more than a bigger reward.
“It's in my backpack right now, honestly.”
Privacy is a dealbreaker
When we explained the card-based idea, the first question was always what we store. A clear, short answer was enough for almost everyone.
“As long as you don't have my name, fine.”
04 · Process
Designing the service before the screens.
PackPerks touches the SmartBin, the card terminal, a web page, the phone's wallet and the counter where a perk is redeemed. I started with a service blueprint and a privacy review with our payments partner before drawing a single screen.
- 01Return a cupSmartBin links it to a card token
- 02Scan the QRShown on the success screen
- 03See your perksWeb page, no sign-up
- 04Add to WalletProgress on the lock screen
- 05RedeemTap the same card at the counter
Optional steps. Perks still count without them.
05 · Design decisions
Your card is your account.
No sign-up, ever
Returns are linked to a token our payments partner generates from the card, never the card number. Scanning the QR code on the SmartBin's success screen opens a web page for that token. There's nothing to fill in. The first thing the page says is how many returns this card has.
Progress lives in the phone's wallet
Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes can update and send a notification without an app. The pass shows progress towards the next perk, and a lock screen message appears when someone is two returns away. That one notification brought more returns than any other change in the pilot.
Redeem by tapping the same card
At the counter, a perk is redeemed by tapping the card at the payment terminal, like paying. For staff it shows up as a discount line. We kept a short code as a backup for card readers that don't support it yet.
Privacy in plain language
The research showed that one clear answer about data was enough to win trust. The page has a short 'what we store' section in plain words, with a delete button that removes everything linked to the card token. In the pilot, 0.4% of visitors used it.
06 · Edge cases
Cards change. People share. Phones get lost.
| Situation | What happens | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Phone pays with Apple Pay, card in wallet | Treated as a different token than the physical card | Card schemes generate a separate token per device. Page explains how to merge. |
| Card expires or is replaced | Progress moves over when the new card is used once with the old QR page | No account to recover, so the page is the link |
| Two people share one card | Perks count together | We decided not to try to tell them apart |
| Visitor from abroad | Works with any contactless card | Card tokens don't care about the issuing country |
| Someone wants to leave | One button deletes the token and history | Required for GDPR and for trust |
07 · Outcome
More cups back, nobody signed up for anything.
PackPerks is opening to all locations in phases, starting with stations and campuses where repeat visits are most common. The waiting list on the PackBack website is how we're managing the rollout.
“It just appeared on my phone that I was two cups away. So I brought two cups.”
“I liked that I didn't have to give my email to a bin.”
08 · Reflection
What I learned.
Constraints made this a better product. Without the 'no apps' rule, we would have shipped another points app, and most people would never have installed it.
I would test the device-token issue earlier. Apple Pay and the physical card count as two different cards, which confused about one in ten pilot users. We fixed it with a merge step, but it should have been in the first version.
Tools on this project
Figma, FigJam service blueprint, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet pass tools, Typeform, Dovetail, Amplitude
Names of the people quoted have been changed to protect their privacy.
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