Punchcard App Pays Out

So far, I have received 3 physical checks from the Punchcard app. The premise of the app is very simple: when you purchase something from a store, take a snapshot of the receipt with your phone, and "punch" in the store. When you have "punched" a store 10 times, you'll receive a check for the average of your purchase amounts up to $30. Supposedly merchants have other deals that they can also give you once you've hit the 10th punch, but I've only ever received checks.

I like that it's very simple to use. There's not a huge learning curve, and it's free. It's available for both Android and iOS. The one nice thing about it, is that there's not really a limit to the type of places where you can "punch" in. According to TechCrunch, "it just switched on loyalty programs for millions of locations across the U.S., even if they didn’t ask for it.

“We’re looking at this as seeding the market, essentially,” explains Punchcard CEO and serial entrepreneur Andy Steuer of why the company has seemingly put the cart before the horse. In other words, usage and rewards first, paying customers (i.e., businesses signing up) second."

There are some oddities in it - the way Punchcard pulls up locations for you to punch in, is powered by Foursquare, and this can result in some weirdness. For example, one of the locations near my house is "Taco Man". Who, or what is Taco Man? I have no idea.

There is a tab for Offers, that presumes to give you local deals similar to what Google Offers, or Groupon, or Living Social does. However, every time I've tried to click on a deal, it fails to actually take me to the offer. It's not like many of those offers are very appealing anyway, so I don't use it.

One thing to remember about this app is that you have to snap a picture of your receipt at the point of purchase. This has been an issue for me when I've used the app because the GPS/Foursquare function is inconsistent, and for certain locations, it wouldn't show me the stores that I was standing right next to. I think this is a bug that got fixed in the latest update, but I need to test it.

You can only "punch" the same location once a day, but you can "punch" your receipt, if you forgot on the day of, up to five days later. This is great, as long as you are right next to your location. I've found it useful because the grocery store is right down the street from me.

There's another downside: your punches have expiration dates. For example, if you punch into a Ralph's store, you'll need to collect 10 punches by a certain date and it will re-set. Usually the date is several months from when you've punched in - however, I had a ludicrous situation once, where I punched into the Los Angeles Zoo on Memorial Day. The expiration date was for June 27, which was less than a month away. How could the app realistically expect me to show up to the zoo 10 times before the month was out?

Although, how could I not love an app that sends me cash? The app is not altogether altruistic. It's also a solution for small business owners. Punchcard also launched "Punchcard for Business", which lets businesses analyze the data collected from the punched receipts, and push out special offers directly to loyal clients. It's a win-win situation for everyone.