Wallaby’s iPhone App Tells You Which Credit Card To Use To Maximize Your Rewards

When reviewing a new iPhone application called Glyph earlier this week that tells you which credit card to use in order to earn the best rewards, we mentioned that a competitor in this space, Wallaby, was doing something similar. As of this morning, however, it’s not just doing something similar – it’s doing the exact same thing. Today, Wallaby is also introducing its own iPhone application which also tells you which card to use at checkout in order to earn the best rewards, whether that’s travel or hotel points, cash back, loyalty points, or any other supported rewards program.

Despite the timing, the launch of Wallaby’s app isn’t a reaction to Glyph’s debut. iPhone apps like this aren’t coded overnight, and Wallaby’s app has been in the approval queue with Apple since November 5th. Instead, it’s as Wallaby CEO Matthew Goldman explains: there aren’t really that many original ideas, it’s all about how well you execute and grow, and a lot of other factors.

Wallaby, for those unfamiliar, recently raised $1.1 million in seed funding from  Founders Fund Angel and others around its idea of a smarter, cloud-based wallet. Central to its plans is a universal credit card – a physical card, to be clear – that, when swiped, would smartly route the transaction to the appropriate card based on a customer’s preference.

Those plans are still in the works, says Goldman, and the startup now has over 10,000 people on the wait list. “But unfortunately, the card is taking a little bit longer than we anticipated,” he says. “That’s just the nature of banking and payments and all the regulatory hurdles you have to go through.”

At the same time, requests for Wallaby were rolling in from outside the U.S., which had the company thinking how they could address an international audience, too. The end result is the Wallaby iPhone app. Although it’s U.S.-only for now, Goldman says it can form the basis of reaching international users in the future, while serving those users who have been waiting on a Wallaby card in the meantime.

The app itself is very much like Glyph. It uses geo-location to know where you’re spending, makes card suggestions on the fly, and gives you a big picture overview of your wallet. The differences come into play in terms of user interace (you rank card preferences via drag-and-drop; it shows you the full list of suggested cards in order each time), and its ranking algorithm works a bit differently, too. That is, it doesn’t always simply boil down to the points value in terms of cash back. The nuances between Glyph and Wallaby’s algorithms will matter the most to those who obsessively track their points and airline miles, of course. For more casual users, either app is capable of delivering new insights which allow for smarter spending. In addition, Wallaby’s app includes a list of location-based deals (sourced from Factual and in partnership with MOGL).

In the future, Wallaby will include other features as well, but while there may be no original ideas, Goldman decided to not tip his hand on this one. You can download the new app from here.