Dive Brief:
- McDonald’s loyalty app reached 210 million 90-day active users in 70 global markets, according to executives on a Q4 2025 earnings call Wednesday. Active users are up from 185 million 90-day active users in the second quarter of 2025.
- In 2023, the restaurant chain made about $20 billion in system-wide sales to loyalty members across 50 markets. Sales to loyalty members were almost double that in 2025, according to President and CEO Chris Kempczinski.
- The loyalty app enables McDonald’s Ready on Arrival system, which is driving faster service for mobile ordering, reducing wait times and improving customer satisfaction, according to Kempczinski. The system, which is available in McDonald’s top six markets, uses geofencing technology to speed up the process.
Dive Insight:
Active loyalty members are the “single most important digital metric” for McDonald’s, EVP and CFO Ian Borden said.
Loyalty members visit more frequently and spend more over time than other customers, according to Borden. McDonald’s plans to continue to add more capabilities to its loyalty program to increase its value for customers.
Since its launch in 2020, the McDonald’s loyalty app has created new ways for the company to interact with customers, according to Kempczinski. App users played the restaurant’s annual Monopoly game 500 million times, and the app will feature exclusive partnerships.
“These touch points simply didn't exist a few years ago,” Kempczinski said during the call.
McDonald’s is rolling out the app globally as part of its growth effort. It reached Japan during the quarter and supported the country’s strong comparable sales growth, according to Borden.
The global app expansion will help McDonald’s roll out new technology worldwide, according to Kempczinski.
“When you have the ability to get every market onto a common tech stack, our ability to move with speed and to deploy solutions gets increased by factors of significant numbers,” he said.
McDonald’s posted positive results for the quarter, though it attributed the gains to its emphasis on value rather than its technology push. U.S. comparable sales grew 6.8% year over year during the fourth quarter of 2025, according to an earnings report. Global comparable sales rose 5.7% year over year in the quarter.
