Cardstar and Key Ring make loyalty shopping cards easy to manage.

As Online coupons are becoming more and more popular, a growing number of start ups are springing up trying to capitalize on the trend. Beside a traditional Web site, some of these start ups have moved into the mobile world by having their products available in the form of apps for smart phones users. Earlier this month, two interesting apps Cardstar and Key Ring have moved in the arena and their offerings are impressive.
While Key Ring is designed for Android and Apple devices, Cardstar works on both those platforms and on Blackberry's too. But in general, they both function as a central command for your multiple loyalty shopping cards numbers as the number of those grow.
When it comes down to how they work, the two apps differ a little bit; while you type your loyalty numbers into Cardstar, you can do the same with the Key Ring or use your cellphone’s camera to scan the card’s bar code. By the way, it is worth mentioning that the scanning is not one hundred percent infallible as your chances for success depend greatly on the type of phone that you are using. And more often than not, you will have to manually enter the loyalty card member into your phone and that is particularly true regardless which type of phone you are using. According to these apps developers, the good news is, that as phones' scanners improve, so should be the experience with these apps.

For more, see NYTimes.com