It seems like every major retailer has a rewards card. At one point I remember having CVS, Rite Aid, Shop Rite, Pathmark, and a couple of other merchant barcodes on my keychain, plus my gym membership card. It can make a keyring a bit cumbersome and, quite frankly, unsightly. Most of these places offer wallet-sized cards, but that’s just more junk to fit in your wallet. There’s a new BlackBerry application that might help out if you’re in the same predicament. CardStar creates a scannable barcode on-screen, so you can use your BlackBerry as your universal membership card.
Adding membership or reward cards is an easy process. Once you open the application select the option to add a new merchant. You can then select from hundreds of national and regional stores. You can also add your own, in case CardStar does not list the merchant you’re looking for. Once you do that, you just type in the barcode number from your membership card, and it’s stored within the application.
When you want to use the card, pull up the application, select the appropriate merchant, and the bar code will come up. You can check out their FAQ for tips on how to best scan the barcode. They say it’s best from a handheld scanner, rather than a flatbed one. Really, I’m just impressed that it can scan at all.
You can get more information at CardStar’s website. If you want to download the application OTA, head to http://bit.ly/9vazpr.
Via CrackBerry.
