Wally - holds your plastic cards | Hacker News Reader

Wally - holds your plastic cards

wally-app.com

16 pointsequilibrium30 comments

is this an early april fools joke? every card in my wallet either needs to be used as a physical object (i.e. swiped, hole-punched) or is there for an emergency situation (health insurance, 2-factor-auth don't-have-my-phone codes). I really don't understand what this is for.

I don't carry a wallet. For the past four years I've been carrying just a money clip with cash, ID, and one credit card. You mentioned health insurance cards, and this would be a good way for someone like me to have my insurance info on hand.

I don't carry a wallet. For the past four years I've been carrying just a money clip with cash, ID, and one credit card.

That's splitting hairs a bit isn't it? You are still using an object that serves the same purpose that a wallet does.

The useful thing about a physical insurance card is that everybody can read it when you're unresponsive and in need of help. A smartphone app is not going to be able to replicate that.

Only thing you could do is change your lock screen to include this kind of data (and/or a pointer).

Do people honestly still believe this trope about the hospital needing your physical insurance card when you're unconscious? That they downgrade your emergency care if you don't have the good insurance? This is not a thing that happens.

The physical card is so you have the info in a difficult-to-lose form when you go to a doctor's appt, check into the ER with a broken bone, etc.

Plus... many places want to scan/photocopy your insurance card. I'm not sure how that would work from a smartphone screen.

This looks interesting, but I don't know how useful it would be for me given most of my cards have to be swiped or inserted into some kind of device.

Hi guys, happy to read all the interesting stuff you write about our app.

We actually launched this app before both Passbook (Apple) and Wallet Hub (Microsoft). I'm not sure when Google Wallet launched, but we found out about it after releasing Wally.

Our intentions were to build a slick, intuitive and really easy to use wallet app without all the registration, cloud sync, offers etc. We developed it, released it...just to read about how all these major actors announced their stuff some weeks later. Also, some Swedish alternatives were released after us, winning awards, getting venture capital etc.

We never aimed for that...our app is really simple, and that has been the plan all along.

After releasing Wally, we have been working on other stuff (apps, open source libs, web services etc.) for the most time except some updates. However, after receiving some interesting feedback, we felt like going back and polishing the app some more. We did so, added iPhone 5 support and just finished retina support for the photos, when...

...a new app that's called Wally was released (yes, that's right)!

A week or so ago, a couple of guys in the middle-east just launched their new brand new, award winning app. It does not do the same thing, but it has the same name, similar icon and a similar logotype.

We'll see where this'll end :)

If you want to get in contact with us, give us feedback etc. - just hook up with us at http://wally-app.com. We will release a more informative site soon, but you'll find links to our issue and feedback page, Facebook page etc.

It looks handy. Some places allow you to use an image of the card (or just the number of the card without the physical card); and sometimes I'm buying online and I just need the numbers. I'm gently worried about the consequences of storing a credit card number and the cv2 number on a computer.

Isn't this ultimate skeumorphism? Take a real world object, photograph it, and put the photograph in a virtual wallet which is all leather and stitching. :-p

But it does look and easy to use. That bit of photo editing looked good.

How does this differ than Passbook (default on iOS)? You may want to answer that on the site, since they look basically the same. And as others mentioned, how is this useful if you can't even use the cards in the real world? It's essentially a nice looking photo library of pictures of your credit cards. I don't see any value in this, I think you need to add some points to the site of how this is could be useful in the real world.

AFAIK Passbook does not do this, or at least no company has integrated into Passbook yet. I still don't understand how Passbook works. In the US there is only a handful of apps that use Passbook, and even then, the one I do own (United), I still can't figure out "what it does".

"...or at least no company has integrated into Passbook yet..."

Huh? I have tons of apps that use Passbook? I use Passbook daily for rewards cards and loyalty cards? Here is a link to a huge list of apps integrated into Passbook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passbook_(application)

I have personally used it tons of times with my Starbucks card, Walgreens card, and for tickets to get into concerts.

It's actually quite handy. I wish a lot more places would use it.

For example, when flying to Germany I had the Lufthansa app. An hour before the flight it popped up on my home screen and stuck there. (As in, no cancel.)

Then when I go to the airport, I swiped it and the lady just scanned it in - and me and my girlfriend both had our tickets printed.

I think the use case for this app is for people to store their loyalty cards in the app... Not their credit cards.

In most (almost all?) cases the cashier can manually enter the number on the front of the card in to their register. For example, if the magnetic stripe on the back of the card was wearing out or damaged.

Yep. A lot of my loyalty cards also have a bar code on the back which can be scanned. So I believe this would work as well.

http://lemon.com/ has been working on this for quite a while before this app and Passbook. Actually I'd say Passbook is a total Lemon rip off. It also lets you track your expenses by taking pictures of your receipts and by connecting to your bank accounts.

lemon shows on their frontpage someone taking a picture of its VISA and putting it inside his iPhone.

What can possibly go wrong?

: )

The issue with using this for loyalty cards is that in my experience, many stores have scanners than can't scan a glossy screen very well.

Also, the skeuomorphic design is nice but you could easily fit more cards on the screen by using a simpler list view.

It's not only the glossiness, it's also about the original size. Barcodes work because they are at a fixed size, and a picture on screen can seldom reproduce the exact same size.

This is also why QR Codes have reference points (those three corner blocks or the big centre block)

I kinda like it... It's helpful for when I make a purchase online and I need to enter the code of my Visa/Mastercard, since my telephone is on the desk next to me and my wallet usually in my jacket, it could be handy. You could also scan some other cards containing something like a tax number or other information you might sometimes need. Might benefit from an add on feature to scan business cards?? You'd have to offer a search function though, I think?

It might be good to add some description to the site. I'm not going to watch a demo video, and I'm unlikely to click the App Store link when I don't really understand what the app actually does.

Not that I disagree about adding a description, but why wouldn't you watch a demo video if you want to know what the app does?

In my case: I'm reading this on the bus in a loud environment where I pay through the nose for mobile data.

Videos have higher time commitments than well formed descriptions. I grudgingly clicked on the video because there is no description, but I almost closed the tab instead. Then I immediately skipped to the middle of the video anyway.

The information to time ratio on videos is almost always extremely low. I can spend ten seconds skimming a description, or a couple of minutes waiting for a demo video to finally get around to showing me what I'm interested in.

Videos are great for showcasing a game or a movie where the visuals are the most important part. They are awful for an app where the most important thing is what functionality it has.

Demo videos are not suitable for play in certain situations - like when I don't have headphones.

My connection is crappy and I don't expect the video to load reliably.

How is this different from the core functionality of KeyRing?

Nice UI. I need something like this for Android... Are there any recommended? I've been meaning to make it myself but just haven't made the time.

Yeah, the camera.

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