Guest360 Profile Stitching
Profile Stitching is how Guest360 connects records from multiple data sources into a single guest profile. When a guest transacts at your location through different channels, such as a POS transaction, an online order, and a loyalty redemption, those records may exist as separate entries across your connected systems. Profile Stitching identifies when those records belong to the same person and merges them into one unified profile.
The result is a more complete picture of each guest's behavior, spend, and history across your entire business.
How Profile Stitching Works
Guest360 uses deterministic matching to link guest records. Deterministic matching means a confirmed, exact match on at least one known identifier. Guest records are merged only when there is a direct, verifiable link between them. Matching is always scoped within a single brand (records from different brands are never merged).
Current matching signals:
- Punchh identity: The guest's unique Punchh loyalty account identifier
- Email address: An exact match on the guest's email across two or more records
- Phone number: An exact match on the guest's phone number across two or more records
- Payment token (PARN): A tokenized payment identifier assigned by PAR Pay. PARN is stable across tokenized cards, wallets, and reissued cards on the same payment account, which allows Guest360 to recognize in-store guests who have never enrolled in loyalty.
Guest360 never uses name, birthday, or credit-card number as matching signals.
Note: In-store guest matching requires PAR Pay (for PARN-based matching) or coordination with your payment provider to supply the required payment data. Without PAR Pay, Guest360 can still unify Punchh members and online-ordering identities using email and phone, but it will not recognize in-store guests who have never enrolled in loyalty. If your brand does not use PAR Pay, contact your Punchh representative to discuss your options.
Matching Outcomes
When an incoming record is processed, one of four outcomes occurs based on how many existing profiles it matches:
| Matches found | Outcome |
|---|---|
| None | A new guest profile is created |
| One | The new identifiers are added to the existing profile |
| Two | The anonymous profile is merged into the matching Punchh member profile |
| Three or more | The profiles remain separate; Guest360 does not merge when the match is ambiguous |
Note: Two Punchh members are never merged automatically, even if they share a payment card or email address. This prevents family members who share a payment method from being collapsed into a single guest record.
Connected Data
Guest profiles grow richer as you connect more data sources. Each connection improves matching accuracy and adds profile detail.
| Data source | What it contributes |
|---|---|
| Loyalty | Identifies enrolled guests and adds membership status, points balance, and offers redeemed |
| POS | Captures transaction history and in-store spend for all guests |
| Online ordering | Adds authenticated email and phone, which helps match the same guest across channels |
| Payments | Links in-store card activity to profiles and adds spend frequency |
What Gets Attributed
When Profile Stitching merges records, the resulting guest profile reflects the combined history across all matched sources. This includes transactions placed before the guest enrolled in your loyalty program. Lifetime value, order history, and visit frequency all reflect the full attributed record, not only loyalty-linked activity.
Note: Profile Stitching attributes spend and transaction history retroactively, but loyalty points are not backdated. A guest must be authenticated at the time of purchase to earn points. Anonymous transactions that are later attributed to a guest profile through Profile Stitching do not generate retroactive point awards.
Profile Stitching in Guest Profiles
You can review the Profile Stitching details for any individual guest from their profile page. The Profile Stitching card shows the number of source profiles merged into the guest's record and the channels those source profiles came from.
Profile Stitching is fully automated. There is no manual merge or unmerge control in the product. Cases the system cannot resolve confidently are flagged as conflicts and reviewed by the engineering team rather than merged automatically.
