Snapchat Introduces Place Loyalty Badges for Snap Map

Snapchat is introducing a new “Place Loyalty” feature to its Snap Map, allowing users to earn digital recognition for the physical locations they frequent most. The update, announced by the company on Wednesday, tracks visit history over the previous 12 months to rank user activity.

How the Ranking System Works

The feature assigns tiers based on how often a user visits a specific location compared to the broader community. These rankings are strictly personal: they are visible only to the individual user, provided they have enabled location sharing with the app.

The system categorizes frequent visitors into three distinct tiers:

• Gold Badge: Reserved for the top 1% of visitors.
• Silver Badge: Awarded to those in the top 10%.
• Bronze Badge: Given to users in the top 25%.

For commercial entities and retail chains, Snapchat will aggregate visit data across all physical locations. While users can choose to share their loyalty status with friends or on other social platforms, the company emphasizes that the underlying data remains private to the user.

Evolution of Snap Map

Since its 2017 debut, Snap Map has transitioned from a tool for tracking friends to a discovery platform for local hotspots. With over 400 million monthly active users reported last year, the feature remains a central pillar of the app’s strategy to maintain user engagement against competitors like Instagram, which launched its own map tool recently.

This latest addition follows a series of map-centric updates designed to gamify the user experience. In 2025, the company introduced the “Footsteps” feature, which maps out a user’s personal travel history, and “Promoted Places,” which allows businesses to highlight their locations to potential customers.