What's the migration path for Lightspeed's built-in customer loyalty program if Shopify has no native loyalty equivalent?

Is Lightspeed loyalty a dollar balance or a points balance?

Lightspeed X-Series loyalty is a dollar balance, not a points scheme. Lightspeed describes customers earning "loyalty dollars to spend in your store" and redeeming "their earned loyalty on sales made in store as if it were cash" (Lightspeed, October 2026). Its balance tool works in money too: to give a customer "$10 in bonus loyalty," staff add 10 to the balance (Lightspeed). So you are not moving a rewards program. You are moving a customer-held dollar liability that was marketed as one, the last balance the full Lightspeed cutover plan moves.

Lightspeed R-Series needs a check first. Lightspeed's R-Series articles describe Lightspeed Loyalty balances as points, with staff "manually adding or removing Loyalty points" (Lightspeed, October 2026), and elsewhere as cash back "in dollars to spend in your store" (Lightspeed). Confirm the unit on a test export, because the unit decides the destination.

How do you export loyalty balances from Lightspeed?

On X-Series, loyalty balances export in the customer comma-separated values (CSV) file's loyalty_balance column. A standard export stops at "1000 customers per CSV file" (Lightspeed, October 2026). Lightspeed documents a link edit for bigger exports: "Limit of 15,000 export has been successful. 30,000 limit causes the page to timeout" (Lightspeed). So 40,000 enrolled customers take 3 to 40 exports (Deploi arithmetic). Take them close together so the balances are one snapshot, not a moving target, and freeze earning for the extraction window if you can.

Lightspeed's Shopify integration does not carry the balances across, because Lightspeed lists loyalty among the features that "aren't compatible with Shopify" (Lightspeed, October 2026). They move by file at cutover.

On R-Series, Lightspeed Loyalty exports its members through Export All Customers as a CSV file, and Lightspeed does not list that file's columns (Lightspeed). Look for a balance column on a test export before you plan around it.

Should the balances land in Shopify store credit or a points app?

Lightspeed X-Series dollar balances should land in Shopify's native store credit, because a points app would need a conversion rate first.

The obvious move is a loyalty app, because that is the category name. The better move is to split the problem in two:

1. Land the existing balances in store credit, because they are dollars and Shopify's application programming interface (API) loads them as dollars.
2. Choose the go-forward program separately. Smile documents a reward that turns points into Shopify store credit on its Standard plan and above (Smile Help Center, October 2026), so a program chosen later can pay into the same balance. What Smile and LoyaltyLion import and cost is its own answer.

Doing both at once forces a points rate onto balances that were never points.

Which store credit rules shape a Lightspeed loyalty migration?

Three Shopify store credit rules shape the migration: a per-customer cap, maximum-amount redemption and a sign-in requirement.

• A cap under $15,000 USD per customer account (Shopify Help Center, October 2026). In a retail loyalty book this affects almost nobody, so filter the export for accounts near the cap before you load, rather than meeting them in an error log.
• The maximum possible amount applies. Shopify says "Only the full store credit amount can be applied as a payment method" (Shopify Help Center). In store, a customer with $50 of credit buying $30 of items "must redeem the full $30 USD" (Shopify Help Center, October 2026), and Okendo shows credit left over online staying "on their balance" (Okendo Help Center). So basket size is no reason to choose a points app.
• Signed-in customers on customer accounts. "Store credit isn't available for legacy customer accounts," and online redemption needs the customer signed in through customer accounts or Shop Pay (Shopify Help Center). For in-store redemption on Shopify point of sale (POS), store credit "can't be active as a payment method on Shopify POS without it also being active on your online store." So tell customers before cutover, in dollars, where the balance now lives and how to sign in to see it, as announcing the balance before customers find it advises.

When should you not migrate the Lightspeed loyalty program at all?

Do not migrate the loyalty program when enrolment is nominal, when it never worked, or when the go-forward rules are undecided, because each turns a careful load into wasted work: