3 Ways to Free yourself from the Multitude of Customer Cards

Tired of carrying around all of those customer rewards cards in your wallet or on your keychain? You can cut back on those by consolidating them into a single item to carry or store in your car or for those more tech-savvy users, go digital. This is just a quick summary of some of the information I found while working on my own.

1. CardStar http://www.mycardstar.com/
This is what originally got me started on this project after reading about the service on Mashable. Great if you have a smart phone.
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2. Digital copies
If the barcodes work on an iPhone app then you might be able to email or upload pictures of your barcodes to your phone. Load them up on the screen and hand to the cashier. You might want to have a backup in your wallet the first time you try, just in case it doesn't work.


3. One card
There are a number of sites which will offer to create a single card that you can keep in your wallet. Or you can make your own using tips found towards the end of this post.
http://www.keyringthing.com/ <- My final solution. http://www.justoneclubcard.com/
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Getting good barcode images

You have a couple options in order to copy or create your barcodes.
1. Use an online generator
Most generators will need to know the whole card number. However, some companies don't put it on the card so here are some tips:
UPC-A numbers are 12 numbers so if you have 10 numbers try starting it with a 4 and the last digit is a check digit which can be calculated online from the other numbers
Long numbers or alphanumeric codes will likely be "Code 39" barcode and have visible space between each character
Read wikipedia on how to read a barcode number. The largest space or bar will be 3 bar-widths.

http://www.barcoding.com/upc/
http://www.justoneclubcard.com/index.py?view=advanced

2. Scan your cards
3. Take a photo
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