Wallaby Card by Wallaby Financial

Last year a new customer visited us at a show and when his purchases were rung up, he pulled out his smart phone and started typing. We can actually take a smart phone PayPal transaction in person without touching a credit card, so this wasn’t a big surprise, but what he did next, came as a bit of shock. You see, he was using his smart phone to select which card he was going to use to pay for his purchase, not because all of the cards were maxed out and he needed to figure out where to squeeze in a few more bucks. No. He was using an app on his smart phone to determine which card gave him the best deal to make the purchase. No kidding.  It’s all about the rewards.

This is one of those times when you have to stop and interview your customer to understand what’s going on.

He was using a service called walla.by by Wallaby Financial. A lot of us use credit cards that offer rewards. Some consumers select airline miles as a reward, others get gift cards and still others will get cash back. To make things more complicated, the reward deals change. As an example, this month Discover may give you 5% cash back on gasoline purchases and next month it will be 3% back at restaurants. At the same time Chase Freedom may offer 3% rewards at grocery stores this month and switch to 3% at movie theaters next month. If you have a handful of cards, like most Americans, keeping track of which vendor is offering a special reward for a particular class of purchases may become a significant burden very quickly. That’s where Wallaby comes in. Their tools help consumers identify and optimize the rewards already available to them. You shop anyway. Why not get the most out of your purchases?

The walla.by app is available for both Android and the iPhone to take shopping along with you, so that you can select the best card to use at the register. The download and the service itself are absolutely free and the following short video explain more about how walla.by works:

Wallaby Financial is also indicating that they will be coming out with a Wallaby Card, the one card to rule them all. All of your registered credit cards and reward programs will be linked to your one Wallaby Card, which you will be able to use at any retailer and Wallaby’s smart algorithm will determine which of the cards to place the purchase on. It’s a nifty idea and we all love getting the biggest bang for our buck.

Disclaimer: We have no formal relationship with Wallaby Financial. This is just a great idea that we wanted to share with our own customers.

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