

Ask HN: Single loyalty card? - PCONerd

Been thinking about an idea for awhile and want to see what people think.<p>It seems that every company has their own value/club card of some sort. Be it Safeway, Subway, Best Buy or one of the other thousands out there. For the end user, this is a major pain in the ass. There is no way to carry everyone's card with you all the time. Because of this, I just stop taking new cards and it's really a loss to me but I can't fit them all in my wallet (or better yet, I don't need a 8th Subway value card).<p>Now to me, this is an easy problem to solve. Instead of every company having their own card, why not accept a single network card? One card to rule them all. It's not a magical idea, one central database that contains std. user information and a unique id that other networks can tap into to retrieve data. With a simple system, you could reduce the number of value cards down to one card. Making it much easier for end users as well as increase user participation.<p>Ok, so one other value a system like this could offer is the ability for smaller mom and pop stores to create their own value card system without having to shell out a lot of money. Using a simple application and DB, they could start offering rewards to customers that buy say the 15 plant from the local nursery and get one free.<p>Anyway, that's my idea. It just seems odd that with today’s technology we can’t do something better than fitting yet another card into our wallets. Let me know what you think.
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vyrotek
I've thought about this as well. Although I've never understood why it had to
be a special card. But it would be nice to bridge physical store loyalty cards
with online store loyalty cards.

You really only need some sort of global ID for the customer right? We'll why
not try to make it a standard to use a QR code which stores an MD5 Hash of
your email address? This way it can be printed on almost anything by anyone.
The first time you visit a store and use it they ask you for your email
address and confirm that code is yours and matches. Its also a way to control
who gets your email. Then like you mentioned, you host an information
lookup/recording service.

The specific thing about the idea that has always intrigued me is the idea of
multiple companies knowing about my spending habits at each place. Make you
can charge McDonalds more money for access to my BurgerKing buying habits.
That would help McDonalds market things much better than just knowing why I
buy at their stores.

The best part about the QRCode/Hash concept is that I can make my first one or
a new one at anytime. I don't have to fill out some huge form while at the
grocery store. I would also love access to my own usage history as a consumer.
It could work well with services like Mint perhaps.

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jodrellblank
And then I can make one which is an MD5 hash of your email address and make it
look like you buy ... well, all sorts of interesting things.

Also, an MD5 hash of an email address is sometimes reversible. Search the web
for the MD5 hash of my email address using duckduckgo.com and it finds a
Disqus profile for me, identified by the md5 hash, but if you click 'claim
profile' it tells the full email address. And that exists accidentally because
I commentented on some blogs using that email address not knowing Disqus
aggregates cross-blog comments.

Also, the space of input is vastly constrained, most people will have an
@popular-domain address (by definition of popular domain) so @gmail.com,
yahoo, hotmail, aol will cover a lot. And the initial bit is probably not
random - either names or initials and names or names with numbers will get a
lot.

On forums the guess forum-username@gmail.com is likely to be right for a few
people.

In other words an MD5 hash of an email is only pretend secret, so make it
clear that it's not intended to be secret and use a QR code of the email
address itself, or use some unrelated ID which really keeps the email address
secret.

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vyrotek
I just recently heard about a mobile project called KeyRing. They seem to scan
the barcodes from your cards and store them on your phone.

[http://androinica.com/2009/05/07/keyring-app-digitizes-
store...](http://androinica.com/2009/05/07/keyring-app-digitizes-store-card-
account-info/)

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waterlesscloud
I think this is the true business model for Foursquare in the end. Everything
else is just the groundwork for it.

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jodrellblank
A multi-company reward card exists in the UK:

<http://www.nectar.com/collect-online/retailers-a-z.points>

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PCONerd
Do you personally have a card? And if so, does it help?

~~~
jodrellblank
I don't have one.

