Scanning wallet cards into the iPhone

This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number on them that you get from places like the local grocery store, or some other retailer. They're useful to have around, but they tend to pile up after a while, and pretty soon, your wallet gets to be a brick of barcodes rather than anything you'd actually want to carry around in your pocket. Albert's solution was to scan all of his barcodes into the iPhone, front and back, as an iPhoto album. And lo and behold, just like the paperless boarding passes we posted about a while back, it worked. All of the barcodes were scannable, which means no more countless membership cards -- just a gallery in your iPhone.

We've already heard of barcodes reading both on and off of the iPhone, of course, and we'll hopefully see more of this when the SDK drops in just about a month here (maybe, in the future, someone will write an app to generate barcodes from numbers, so you don't even need to get a clear scan). But even without an external app, this is pretty handy solution to clearing up some of the clutter in your wallet. Obviously, for anything important (driver's license, credit cards), an iPhone scan won't do. But just to get the membership prices down at the Jewel-Osco, scanning wallet cards into an iPhone seems to work just fine. Very nice.

[via Waxy]

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Source: http://www.tisgoud.nl/blog/2008/05/11/WalletCardsOnMyIPhone.…

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Software Hacks Tips and tricks Odds and ends iPhone

This is pretty much genius. Like Albert, I have a bunch of "membership cards" in my wallet -- they're those cards with a barcode or number...

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artifex

Almost all my cards have little tags to stick on my keyring. But it's a nice idea.

May 15 2008 at 2:03 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Scott

I used my iPod Touch to get into a They Might Be Giants concert once. I forgot the ticket but luckily found some wifi to pull up the .pdf version.

May 15 2008 at 1:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

eugene

or use this to consolidate:
http://www.justoneclubcard.com/index.py

May 14 2008 at 10:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

livePulse

why use a dutch swimming-membershipcard?

May 14 2008 at 3:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Will

I think I will wait till remote wipe is enabled before I try this.

May 14 2008 at 2:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shorty

It is a great idea though for companies to provide a downloadable electronic iPhone card.

May 14 2008 at 2:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jake

Yep, I shoulda thought of that before. I have scanned and printed my loyalty cards for years to keep down the bulk. This way the paper won't wear out!

May 14 2008 at 1:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

Man, this idea is like 11 months old, LOL. I did this with things like my insurance card and other similar items the weekend I got my iPhone last June.

Amusingly, when I got the Apple $100 "rebate" thing for the price drop on early buyers of the phone, the first thing I did was send the PDF of the coupon to my iPhoto as a picture. When I tried to apply the credit, the Apple scanner at the Apple Store could not scan the barcode.

As far as CVS and grocery stores - don't they all just use your phone number? All of mine locally (CVS, Savon, Albertsons, Vons, Ralphs, etc) do. I just key or speak my phone number at check out - a bit more handy than pulling out the wallet, or even the iPhone.

May 14 2008 at 12:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Dave's comment

Randy

And some of us were doing it on your other phones long before that, but bringing it to the masses doesnt hurt..

Coming off self important doesnt help anyone.

May 14 2008 at 4:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

@Rand- spoken from the lofty heights of self rightousness, no doubt.

May 14 2008 at 10:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

BabyGotMac

Great idea. This could be handy for grocery stores, etc.

May 14 2008 at 12:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

meeee

make sure the store will accept the scanned card! you'll be shooting yourself on the foot if you scanned all these membership cards while they don't accept them...

May 14 2008 at 12:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply