CardStar – An App I Like, Find Very Useful, & How To Move Your Backups On It Cross-Platform

I have been using this app called CardStar on my BlackBerry Torch 9800 for quite a while and I used it on my Bold 9700 and Bold 9000 before it. You can find them on Twitter at @MyCardStar. The point of the app is that it lets you store digital versions of your loyalty, reward and club membership cards right on your smartphone. This lightens your wallet and makes me happy especially as a man who doesn’t want to look like he’s got George Costanza’s wallet.

The app works across platforms and is available for BlackBerry, Android, iPhone/iOS, Windows Phone 7, and Symbian. I have used this app, as I mentioned above, for a long time and while I won’t pretend I use it on a daily basis the great thing about it is that when I need it, it’s there. Even when a store’s scanner won’t scan your phone’s screen I have found that they are always willing to type in the loyalty card number manually. In fact, the only place I have ever had trouble with this is Shoppers Drug Mart who, for some reason, demand that your Optimum card be physically with you to be awarded points and no digital stand-ins are allowed.

The question that came up for me the first time I switched to an Android phone to review it was “Can I take the backup file I made on my BlackBerry’s CardStar app & use it to load my cards onto my Android’s CardStar app?” See, the app itself allows you to backup your cards to your memory card so it stood to reason I should be able to move the XML file created as a backup between platforms, right?

Side note: The other reason I asked was laziness. I couldn’t remember what I’d done with those random other cards because I’d been saving them in CardStar for so long. I, therefore, really didn’t want to have to go dig them up from the back of closet or bottom of a box somewhere.

I asked the folks from CardStar via Twitter and they were unable to supply an answer. Turns out I was the first person to ever think of this. So, after some messing around on my own I figured out that, yes, you CAN do it. The key is to enter one card (doesn’t have to be a real card because you’re going to overwrite the file containing it anyway) on your Android device so the app makes a CardStar folder & XML backup file. Once this is done, all you need to do is replace the dummy XML file & restore your cards from the good XML file you’ve imported from your other device (in this case it was my BlackBerry Torch 9800 to an HTC Incredible S). Simple-easy right?

Do you have an app that you use which performs a similar function? Do you use/have you used CardStar? Why did you choose one over the other?

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