Why you don’t need to carry your cards

MILLIONS of shoppers will be leaving their loyalty cards at home this festive season but they will still be able to rack up rewards points.

As consumers continue to shift away from tapping their cards at the checkout to pay and instead use their phones, the same applies to rewards cards.

Popular loyalty reward card app Stocard has quickly become a hit in Australia and next month is expected to top three million users nationally.

Adding about 100,000 users monthly, the app it is expected to have up to five million users in a couple of years.

Stocard managing director Radinck van Vollenhoven said shoppers often signed up to “to lighten the load of their wallet”.

“We are solving a problem for people,” he said. “They don’t like having 20 or 30 loyalty cards in their wallet or purse.”

“There’s a general trend away from having all these different cards in your purse and different loyalty apps into one aggregated solution.

“Generally people want to slim down their wallet and purse as much as they can.”

The app allows users to take photos or punch in the details of each loyalty card into their smartphone, either an iPhone or Android device.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said some retailers were still behind the times with loyalty schemes and needed to catch up.

“The days of having cardboard cards in your wallet are going nowhere,” he said.

“Because of the way trade is changing and credit cards can go in our mobile devices, we don’t necessarily carry our wallets when we go out.”