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SmartPocket App Review: A Smarter Alternative to Loyalty Cards

SmartPocket App Review: A Smarter Alternative to Loyalty Cards

By Mir Rafae | Updated: 11 June 2015 14:22 IST

SmartPocket, by Bangalore-based Findulum Techlabs, is a free iOS and Android application that wants to save you from having to carry all your loyalty cards from different stores, along with your credit, debit, and ID cards. It's a good idea in theory, because most of these cards are really nothing more than a barcode or a serial number, but how well does it work in practice?

When you sign in to the app for the first time, it shows you a list of brands whose loyalty cards are supported. It's a long list, including brands like Puma, Zara, Arrow, Peter England, Westside, and Fabindia; stores including Bodyshop, Big Bazaar, and Apollo Pharmacy; some hotels, including the Taj; and airlines, including Jet Airways and Lufthansa.

Tick the ones you have loyalty cards for, and the app then takes your mobile number. If your mobile number is registered at a partner outlet - there are five so far; Puma, People, Regal, Turtle or Peter England - then it will automatically display the points available for redemption on those cards.

Once you start, the app is divided into sections feed and memberships. In the feed, you're 'following' the different brands you selected, and you can see the latest products and deals from them. The Buy Online button on these cards takes you to the website of the brand, where you can shop for the product you were looking at.

The Memberships tab on the other hand shows you the cards you added at the start. You can also add loyalty cards of brands under various categories, such as shopping, daily needs, airlines, hotel accommodation and banking partners.

Once you have made your selection of loyalty cards, more data still has to be entered. Details like the card number and expiry dates have to be entered, but you can also use the app's barcode scanner to try and populate these details. You can also photograph the front and back of the card.

You can also add credit or debit cards from banks like SBI, HDFC and Standard Chartered. This isn't exhaustive though; when we were trying to save card details, our card, "Regalia" from HDFC wasn't listed. American Express wasn't listed either.

More common ones, like Axis and ICICI Bank cards are available in the list. You can save the card number, type of card, MasterCard or Visa, type of card, and expiry date. It doesn't let you save the CVV number, most probably for security, which is also most likely why you can't scan a credit or debit card, or save photos of the card. According to Findulum, the app stores all the data on cloud and it's encrypted with highest levels of security.

There's not much point to saving these details though; you'll still need to carry the card to make a payment, so it's really not much "smarter" than writing down the number on a piece of paper - but that's more a limitation of Indian retailers and payment eco-system, than the app itself. We do wish the app incorporated features like the best card to be used, maximum reward points and other offers, the way the CardBack App does, without even taking the card numbers.

But the real focus of this app is loyalty cards. The idea is simple - instead of carrying around a dozen cards, you store the details of all your cards - all organised in one place. You can then a display barcode directly on your phone using the app, or read out a serial number (if the store doesn't have a barcode reader), and if the card is for one of the partnered brands, then you'll get more information such as the reward points and the rewards available. Even without that, if the store or brand is amongst the list of apps already included in the app, then you'll be able to read the rewards available, see the earn rate for points, and look at a FAQ for each loyalty card.

While testing the app, we added a Cafe Moments card from Cafe Coffee Day. SmartPocket was unable to read the correct card number via the camera scan option, so the details had to be entered manually. And since it's not a partner brand, the app didn't display our reward points or the credit balance.

We also added a Jet Airways card, entered our login ID and password, and it showed our Jet miles, which was great. If you are at a shopping outlet like Shoppers Stop, and you forgot to carry the card, you can display the barcode of your digital membership card stored in the app. However, some stores may insist on you having a physical copy of the card, so your mileage may vary from store to store.

The catch is that not too many brands have tied up with SmartPocket yet, so for the most part, it's really just useful for making a copy of the card you can carry more easily. In fact, the app also has a section for Personal Cards, which range from your Aadhaar card, to your driver's license, PAN card, passport or voter ID. You'll have to enter the data manually, but you can also save photos of the front and back of these cards.

What's the point? Think of the number of times you've needed to write down one of these details on a form - every time you travel internationally, you have to pull out your passport to write down the passport number in your forms - and this app allows you to have all this information at hand, without always carrying these cards, and risk losing them. You can also mail the cards directly from the app - very handy if you've ever had to send a mail with your PAN card copy, for instance.

For loyalty cards, it allows you to carry dozens of cards without stuffing your wallet, and that's still pretty useful. It's not as if you can look at an Apollo Pharmacy card and tell how many points are stored on it either; but while it's convenient, it's not particularly "smart".

In the end, Smartpocket is a great app to use, but our only concern is with the data theft these days. It would have been ideal if the app stored data only your phone and not on its server, or at least made that optional. More partnerships are also needed to get more brands on board, so that you can ditch your physical loyalty cards. For now, it's an interesting idea, but not a complete solution.

Smartpocket is available for free on iOS and Android

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