These days I don’t carry a purse much, I end up loading it with useless stuff. I have a coin/card purse that I attach my car key to, my iPhone and a lip gloss and I am ready to go out the door. Less is better (unless you see the clutter in my car and my home office)! So, it’s great to find an app that cuts down on the amount of “stuff” I have to take with me, namely all those key chain membership cards and wallet cards I have to carry around in order to get weekly specials or membership reward points for my purchases. And, what makes this app even better is that it is free. It’s called CardKing and it’s a great way to keep all those membership cards in one place and along with any other information like student id, license number, social security number, equipment serial numbers, license plate — wow, the list goes on.

The first thing you need to do is add your membership/reward cards to get rid of that clutter on your keychain and in your wallet. Because I own an iPhone 3GS with autofocus I was able to scan the barcodes of most of my membership cards and CardKing let me know a card was scanned successfully with a beep. I checked the numbers, made sure the barcode looked right and then saved the information. My sports club was listed as a merchant and I selected it but it didn’t want to scan the barcode. So, all I had to do was enter the number under the barcode and I was all set. It’s that easy for over 1000 merchants, vendors and associations in the CardKing app.

If you are using an earlier generation of the iPhone or an iPod Touch then you can enter the number under the barcode of each card you have and CardKing will generate the barcode.

If a merchant doesn’t exist in the app you can add a custom barcode by putting the name of the store/vendor in. selecting a category, scanning the barcode and then selecting the proper barcode format (Code-39, Code-128 or Codabar).

I entered all my reward/membership cards using their barcodes. I then entered in my AAA card, a couple of hotel reward cards and my license number all of which have no barcodes to work with but numbers I want to have easily on hand.

I have used some of the cards with barcodes I scanned at the merchant site without difficulty. For scanning purposes it is recommended not to have a screen protector but I have had no problems with my crystal clear screen protector as long as it is clean (I quickly wipe off fingerprints before presenting to cashier).

I like that when I open a card I can get more information like a link to the merchant/vendor website, phone number, ability to locate stores near me and email the merchant.

A couple of features I would like to see are

• Ability to categorize cards/numbers in folders. I would love to be able to have all the cards that need to be scanned up front which I can do easily by organizing them within the app but I would also love to then have a folder for numbers I want to store but don’t need as easy access to like my reward cards.
• Since the app has information on merchants it would be great if they incorporated specials or coupons available if any for each merchant I have in my list.

Overall I find CardKing to be the king of reward/membership cards and being free makes it tops on my iPhone apps list.

Do you use CardKing or a similar program?

(4.5/5)