Lidl Plus

Lidl Plus is the loyalty app for the Lidl supermarket chain. It is only useful if you shop at Lidl, and only in countries where the chain operates — the account is tied to a market, and a German account does not work in a Spanish store.

What it actually gives you

• Digital coupons applied at checkout by scanning the app’s barcode. These are the main reason to install it, and the discounts are real rather than nominal.
• Scratch-card promotions after each purchase, which is the gamified layer.
• Digital receipts, which are genuinely more convenient than paper for returns and for anyone tracking spending.
• Weekly offer previews before they reach the shelf.

The trade being made

Loyalty apps exchange discounts for purchase history. Lidl learns what you buy, how often, at which store and at what time, and that is the point of the programme rather than a side effect. Whether that is a fair trade depends on how much you actually save, and that is something you can measure after a few months rather than guess at.

The app requests location to identify your store. It works without granting it if you set the store manually.

The rating is low, and it is worth knowing why

At around 3.7 it sits well below most apps of its size. The complaints cluster on reliability at the till — coupons failing to apply, the barcode not scanning, the app needing a connection in stores with poor reception. That is a real pattern rather than noise, and it is the reason to keep a fallback rather than rely on it for a large shop.