The Canberra-founded universal digital loyalty card built for coffee lovers
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In a city obsessed with coffee culture, there’s nothing like the feeling of getting a free cup from your favourite café.
The only problem? Keeping track of your coffee card.
The tiny bit of cardboard has long been both a blessing and a curse for coffee lovers – something that offers the chance at a well-deserved free cup of joe and something that is also (and almost laughably) easy to lose, forget or accidentally throw out.
But the days for mourning the free coffee you almost had (before you disintegrated the card in the wash) are over – and it’s thanks to the invention of a free universal digital coffee card created by a Canberra local.
Founded by New Zealand-born Anthony Jellicoe, STAMPR began out of frustration.
Sick of juggling multiple loyalty cards and avoiding new cafés because they wouldn’t stamp his usual card – seeing him pay for a coffee without any reward at all – he thought that having one ‘universal’ card would be the perfect solution.
So he decided to make one, creating a phone-based solution that allows people to collect stamps across multiple cafés (and earn free coffees faster). STAMPR was conceived in September 2025 and born in October, growing to over 2,500 active members.
The way it works is simple.
To access the digital coffee loyalty card, all you need to do is scan a QR code at your local café or join on the STAMPR website. It’s free to join, and there’s no app required.
The card sits in either your Apple Wallet or Google Pay; each time you buy a coffee from a partner café across Canberra, you simply show the card to collect a stamp. Then – after collecting nine stamps – your tenth coffee is free at any partner café. Once you claim your freebie, the card resets and you can start collecting again.
“We want to go nationwide, want to be across all of Australia, and allow people to use the card universally in multiple places, but our biggest goal is convenience,” says Anthony.
“We want people to earn more free coffee. We want to support more cafés with business, because we know it’s tough for them.”
Anthony Jellicoe, founder of STAMPR.
Currently in partnership with 27 cafes across Canberra (including East Row, Bad Bunny Eatery, The Goods Wholefoods and Brew and Brew Café) Anthony hopes to connect STAMPR with more cafés.
Strongly believing that the concept offers them just as much (if not more) value than to the people using the card, he says that it offers a way to tap into a shared network of coffee lovers and turn that into real business. It also reduces the cost of running loyalty programs.
“The current average stamp-to-free-coffee ratio is 14 paid coffees to one free one, so in some ways this card outperforms the paper loyalty cards,” he explains.
“The biggest benefit for them [the business] from our point of view is they get access to a shared network…They get customer attention, people staying where they are, and also customer growth.”
“If someone is very keen to get a stamp, they’ll try to find a place that accepts the stamp and that should generate more business.”
Supporting cafés where he can – like paying them a commission for every new customer they sign up and even helping cover the cost of alternative milk – STAMPR is deliberately trying to give back. And at a time when many small cafés are struggling with rising costs and razor-thin margins, the hope is the incentive of free coffee will see new, loyal customers for all the businesses involved.
“If I’m a customer, if someone from a cafe knows my order, it’s nice and friendly and bubbly, and has good coffee – that’s my loyalty. I’m going to stay there, not just because I can get free coffee,” says Anthony.
“That’s what we try to convince the cafes on. You do good coffee; your customers will stay.”
For more information about STAMPR or to download the card, visit stampr.com.au.
Feature image: Pew Pew Studio.
