It’s widely accepted that one of the biggest impacts of the Covid pandemic has been to massively accelerate trends that were already in play before the outbreak, particularly when it comes to technology.

Morrisons’ announcement that it plans to ditch its plastic loyalty card, in favour of a digital-only version, is the latest example.

The supermarket is also doing away with the endearing but outdated notion of shoppers collecting points, in favour of cold hard price reductions and instant rewards.

It’s yet another sign of an age in which instant gratification is the order of the day – which raises questions about how loyalty cards fit in.

With the clock ticking on using cash, let alone carrying around a stack of plastic store cards, some would argue today’s move is long overdue.

Morrisons says it will set to stop producing any new plastic cards from 10 May, though it is not willing to put a date on when those in circulation will be made redundant.

Coming a day after Morrisons’ grocery partner Amazon launched its second contactless store in Wembley, which has no checkouts at all, let alone plastic loyalty cards, it shows just how behind the curve food retailers are in still having such physical reward mechanisms.

Supermarkets have long been considering how to digitise their rewards offerings, beginning by taking the axe to old-school paper vouchers and then by looking at how the whole shebang could work on our mobile phones. But some experts have felt for a while that loyalty cards are themselves in danger of being becoming obsolete, especially with the march towards EDLP.

As long ago as 2018, a survey by TCC Global found only 6% of shoppers thought they were a key factor in their reasons to shop.

Against that backdrop, the Morrisons More card, which relied on customers collecting “points for fivers” when it launched in 2016, was perhaps always destined to be out of step with the times.

As to whether it can finally do away with the plastic altogether, that remains to be seen.

The trick for Morrisons is whether its new card, as well as a blunt instrument on price, can actually bring the sort of personalised deals and instant gratification that has helped persuade more and more shoppers to go online since the pandemic began.

While rivals such as Tesco have ramped up the contactless elements of their loyalty schemes, Clubcard has become weaponised over the past year, mainly as a way of launching major price reductions across so many products it makes having the card a no-brainer – and being disloyal less attractive.

Tesco has not managed, as yet, to get rid of the plastic Clubcard, or make its loyalty apps a truly personalised shopping experience.

For that, we will have to wait until we see how shopping patterns return as the nation emerges, collectively blinking its eyes, from a year of lockdown. 

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