I Know What I Want For Christmas — iCache
I finally know what I want for this Christmas. No not the iPhone or the iTouch, but iCache. Well if you are planning to buy me a iPhone, I am not going to stop you 
iCache is a device solving a problem, which has been around for a while and no one has figured out a good way to handle it. In this day and age most of us carry multiple credit cards and customer loyalty cards. Every retailer I go to has some sort of a loyalty program, which I end up taking up for its benefits. Even if it doesn’t have any monetary benefits, some retailers mandate a card (like Blockbuster and Costco) for normal transactions.
Now if you are like me, over time you must have collected 8 to 10 cards. This is after I tried consolidating last year using my drivers license. So my wallet has gotten bulky and quite frankly has become a pain in the a**.
iCache has solved this in a really smart way. They have developed a really thin device which smartly stores a generic card with a magnetic stripe. Using their service, one can load all existing credit and loyalty cards. Then they can use their intuitive menu to select the card they want to use at that moment. The device temporarily enables the generic card’s magnetic stripe with the data for the card you selected.
The data on the card stays for 10 minutes only. Not only that, the device also has a built-in fingerprint scanner. The device only provides the card, if the fingerprint matches. These features not only consolidate cards and save space, they also make the whole process very secure. In case you loose the device, you don’t have to discontinue all your cards as the data is removed after 10 minutes.
Such a device is a blessing for me and will help consolidate things. At this point it is not available for sale and their site says that it will come out in 1H 2008. So much for my Christmas gift. They are planning to sell the device via banks and credit card companies. I however think that they should sell these devices directly to the consumers. Here is a video from NBC describing the features.
Gotta have it!
PS — I hope they can create a new version of this device, which has a built in clip for cash and my drivers license. With that I can completely get rid of my wallet.
You can take the bulk of your cards out of your wallet simply by writing the number down on the back of your business card and then keeping that card in your wallet. It works great for the majority of loyalty card services that take either the number or the swipe of the card and aren’t a big deal if lost. I’ve been doing this for years. Low tech works great, cheap, and makes your wallet thinner.
Yeah that’s pretty consolidated. However thats not totally secure as you have almost all the info written down conveniently.
Moreover iCache supports barcode and RFID for other forms of payment or access to clubs etc.
Having said that I do have to take your advice until iCache is available
Back here in India, there is a consolidated card called as i-mint.
i-mint ties up with different vendors who like to have loyalty program and allow you to redeem the points across different vendors with ONE single card.
Also, when you swipe this card, you get i-mint points which can be used to redeem across a range of things.
Specific vendors allow you to redeem points collected at their store.
Shiv,
That’s pretty cool. I will take a look into it.
I have always wanted to consolidate my loyalty cards. Also I hope i-mint can automatically qualify for cross promotions between multiple vendors.
Thanks for the reference. Keep them coming in.