Wallaby, a startup that had been originally working to develop a universal credit card that optimizes consumers’ credit card points, rewards, airline miles and more, recently launched a more simplified version of that concept via an iPhone application. Instead of routing purchases to the appropriate card after swiping a Wallaby-branded credit card, the new iPhone app instead just tells you which card you should use. Today, the company is launching that same application on Android.
Functionally, the Android and iOS applications work the same. That is, the new app also uses geo-location to know where you’re shopping, then makes its credit card suggestions on the fly. The app presents users with a full list of their credit cards, ranked by which one will be the best to use at that given location. For example, it might recommend the card that offers a higher percentage cashback, perhaps, or the one where you can maximize your points or miles. The user interface also tells you what deal each card provides, so users can make their own choices if they prefer, whereas the universal credit card would have made those determinations for them.
The company says that it’s continuing to tweak and improve its card recommendations by fine-tuning the algorithms that help pick the best card for users. In addition, it has to constantly adjust those recommendations based on the various promotions and offers which are run by the credit card companies and their merchant partners.
Wallaby CEO Matthew Goldman told us earlier that Wallaby’s plans to develop a universal card weren’t being scrapped, but that regulatory hurdles were slowing down the process of making that card available to the 10,000+ consumers who had signed the company’s waitlist.
In the meantime, Android users can now download the Wallaby app to have access to these card recommendations. Wallaby competes with others in this space, including Glyph, which is currently iPhone-only.
Wallaby Financial allows its users to maximize cash back rebates, merchant discounts, and frequent traveler rewards all in just one card. The Wallaby Card takes care of the complicated rules for different reward systems on the user’s credit cards and allows the user to maximize their savings. The card is cloud-based storing information of each of the user’s credit cards and automatically picks the best card to charge in each transaction, based on the user’s preferences.
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