What’s New at Per Diem — May 2026

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May's releases focused on customer acquisition, catering, loyalty, and order operations. This month introduced new ways to grow through referrals and partnerships, expanded catering capabilities, and simplified how merchants manage ordering and prep times.

Affiliate marketing is now available

The new Merchant Affiliate Program is now live.

Merchants can create referral and partnership programs that reward customers and promoters for driving downloads, signups, and purchases. The program includes built-in tracking so you can see exactly which campaigns and partners generate results.

You can also set rewards for specific customer actions and control your target customer acquisition costs more effectively.

Referrals now support store credit

Referral rewards are no longer limited to loyalty points.

Merchants can now reward successful referrals with store credit, giving customers a more flexible and tangible incentive to invite friends and family.

This creates more opportunities to encourage repeat visits while growing your customer base.

Catering becomes a dedicated ordering experience

Catering received one of the largest updates of the month.

Catering is now available directly through app ordering and operates as a dedicated ordering mode separate from regular orders. Customers can switch between regular ordering and catering, while the system prevents catering and regular menu items from being mixed together in the same order.

Additional improvements include updated serving calculations, improved catering menu handling, and a cleaner catering ordering experience from start to finish.

Simpler prep time management

Prep time settings have been redesigned to make daily operations easier to manage.

Merchants can now control ordering availability using opening and closing buffers with streamlined timing logic. The previous "prep times by time of day" approach has been removed in favor of a simpler and more predictable setup.

The new system reduces configuration complexity while helping stores maintain accurate fulfillment times.

Stronger loyalty support for franchises

Square Loyalty now supports more advanced franchise loyalty programs.

These updates improve loyalty authentication and category-based rewards handling, making it easier for franchise operators to deliver a consistent loyalty experience across locations.

Birthday rewards have also been improved, and subscription discounts now apply correctly across franchise child stores.

Better group ordering and pay-at-table experiences

Several updates improve how customers interact with group ordering and pay-at-table.

These changes make the experience more reliable across multi-location setups and reduce issues that could interrupt the ordering process.

Looking ahead

May's releases focused on customer acquisition, catering, loyalty, and operational efficiency. These updates give restaurants more tools to grow their customer base, increase repeat visits, and deliver a better ordering experience across app, web, and in-store channels.

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