Aldi just committed £900m to UK expansion and used the announcement to accuse Tesco, Sainsbury's, and the rest of the loyalty-scheme crowd of running a pricing con. The charge is pointed: that rivals inflate shelf prices before "discounting" them for cardholders, making shoppers feel like they're winning a deal that was never real.

The accusation is not new. Aldi chief executive Giles Hurley has made versions of this argument before. But the timing matters. Aldi is under pressure, and the attack on loyalty pricing is at least partly a way to change the subject.

The case against loyalty schemes

Here's how the scheme works, in its most cynical form. A supermarket lists a product at an inflated price for non-members. Members get the "discounted" price, which is actually the normal price. The shopper feels rewarded for their loyalty when what they've really done is accept that the store will track their purchases in exchange for not being overcharged.

Hurley put it plainly: "When promotions start with unrealistically high prices and come down to prices which aren't that competitive and dupe customers, we would view that as loyalty that isn't supportive, that isn't transparent and doesn't help customers plan and budget."

Aldi, which operates 1,092 stores across the UK and Ireland, doesn't run a loyalty scheme. Its pitch is simpler: one price, everyone pays it, and Hurley claims it's already lower than what members get at rival chains. "We are the only retailer where the price of your weekly shop is actually cheaper this summer than last summer," he said. The company says it spent £340m cutting prices this year.

The problem with the attack

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority looked at exactly this question in 2024 and concluded that loyalty pricing schemes "almost always" deliver a genuine saving. That's not nothing. The regulator had every incentive to find a scandal, and its conclusion was broadly that the discounts are real.

Retail consultant Ged Futter, a former Asda buyer, told the BBC that Hurley's comments were "a distraction from the fact that Aldi is under pressure in the UK." He's not wrong. Aldi's sales rose 5% to a record £19bn in 2025, but operating profits slipped by £2.6m to £433m. More telling: the company's growth has slowed significantly relative to rival Lidl, which is gaining market share while also running a loyalty scheme and offering online ordering. The price gap between Aldi and the mainstream supermarkets has narrowed. Asda holds a UK market share of 10.6%, just under a percentage point ahead of Aldi.

So the picture Hurley paints, of a clean discount retailer surrounded by cynical loyalty-scheme operators, is at least partially self-serving.

What this means for your shopping

The deeper question is what loyalty pricing actually costs ordinary shoppers who aren't paying close attention. If a product's non-member price is set artificially high, then anyone without the right app installed is effectively being surcharged. That's a real mechanism, even if the regulator says it doesn't dominate the market.

Aldi's alternative, everyday low pricing with no membership required, at least removes the cognitive load. You don't have to remember which card to tap, whether the discount applies to the size you're buying, or whether this week's special offer is actually special. For shoppers trying to manage a tight grocery budget, that simplicity has value.

Aldi plans to open 42 stores in the UK this year, with 30 arriving in the next 10 weeks, and a similar number in 2026 as it pushes toward an eventual target of 1,500 UK and Irish locations. It's also signing more long-term contracts with British suppliers, partly as a hedge against climate-driven disruptions to food supply that Hurley says the government should treat as a national security issue.

The expansion will keep pressure on mainstream supermarkets to justify their pricing structures. Whether that pressure benefits shoppers depends on one thing: whether the competition is actually about price, or just about who wins the argument.