CardStar iPhone app wrangles multiple membership cards

Don't even think about it. The ladies at the reception will know you are not me.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

I went to the gym yesterday and forgot my membership card at home. Like many times before, I was able to smooth talk the reception ladies into letting me in anyway. But the point is, it's really a hassle having to carry those cards around.

I have one for the gym, one for my car insurance, one for my health insurance, another for my dental insurance, and another, of course, for Subway. There's only so much room in a wallet.

Coincidentally, my colleague Josh Lowensohn pointed me this morning to a really cool iPhone app called CardStar.

Basically, it's database software designed to store most, if not all, of your membership cards for virtually all merchant and service categories: drug stores, grocery stores, gyms, libraries, retailers, and travel and entertainment agencies.

The app includes about 130 companies in the U.S., Canada, and U.K. If you are a member, you can just enter the membership number and the barcode of the card will be automatic retrieved and stored in the iPhone. Next time you need to use the service, you can just display that code on the iPhone's screen and show that to the scanner instead of the card.

The nicest thing about CardStar is that it also allows for entering membership of merchants or companies that are not already included in the app. I tried that with 24 Hour Fitness and it worked. Now all I need to get into the gym are tight shorts and my iPhone, which I would normally carry anyway.

Mesa Dynamics, the developer of CardStar, said that going forward, it would add more features, including access to additional information of a merchant, plus coupons and promotional content.

The CardStar app is available now at App Store. It normally costs 99 cents, but currently is available for free. Do your overstuffed wallet a favor and go get it.

[libertyforall1776]

Nice, but it did not generate the Costco barcode, yet it is in the list...

[fire1fl]

Nice, but ridiculously unnecessary.

My driver's license has a mag strip that all the companies could read easily in place of all this ID bar code, one for every purpose/discount, etc.. There ought to be *some* benefit from the Federally mandated single ID, and, it ought to look something like....single ID.

OTOH, tracking our movements (or at least the ovements of our ID's) is a whole lot easier, in a warrant-free eavesdropping sort of way.

[joshzytkiewicz]

Depending on what state you live in swiping your Driver's License can bring up a whole lot more info than an ID number. Name, address, hair color, eye color, weight. Basically anything that's shown on your ID or that the DMV knows about you.

[sazabo]

This is a nice app I love the idea. One caveat is that most business do not have the scanners that can read a barcode from a screen. Inferred scanners cannot read from a screen but new scanners can. The interesting thing is if you present a barcode on a phone to a person at the front desk they will usually scan it.
Jeff
www.motionphr.com

[Blowzo]

Are you sure this works?

The reason why I ask is because I get coupons in email format with a barcode, and they can never scan the barcode. I think the scanner bounces off the screen or something.

Example I got a free rental at blockbuster, and they went to scan the barcode... NOTHING!

[joshzytkiewicz]

I find it kind of ironic that an article about decreasing membership clutter makes me sign up for another account to comment. Rather than letting me use one of the "universal" sign ins like Google, Wordpress, AIM, etc.

I downloaded CardStar a few days ago and it let me get rid of over half the cards in my wallet. I haven't been anywhere that I needed to use any of those cards yet so I'm not sure how well it will scan.

I just input all my cards iinto Cardstar yesterday and had my first opportunity to use the system today while out shopping at the local pharmacy. It scanned from the screen without problems.

[Will313]

I work at Kroger and a customer had this app and sure enough their Kroger Plus Card came up and scanned with no issues. One of the coolest new technologies I've seen.