CardPointers is an app that automates adding card-linked offers, like Amex Offers, Chase Offers, and Citi Merchant Offers, to your credit cards cards. It also lets you search and track these offers.
Over the past half year, I’ve had the opportunity to try out this app, which I found to be a useful tool and that I will continue to use. And if you spend time adding offers to your credit cards, CardPointers can probably be a useful tool for you.
What drew me in: Automatically adding card-linked offers
CardPointers provides browser extensions for both Safari and Chrome that can automatically add card-linked offers (like Amex Offers, Chase Offers, and the like) to your cards with a just a few clicks. When I log into a bank’s website and click on the CardPointers extension, here’s what I see:
I select All Cards from the dropdown at the bottom, click on the column checkbox to select all offers and then click the checkbox at the bottom of the window and CardPointers goes to work. Within a few minutes all of my offers are added to all of my cards… and to my activated offers within the CardPointers app. (More on that in a bit.)
Having a tool to automatically add offers to my cards saves me time. While I don’t carve out time each month to add offers to my cards, I do spend time doing this. And that time adds up. Adding 100 offers to half a dozen Amex cards can easily take 20 minutes if you’re manually clicking through each one. Multiply that by multiple banks and multiple cards and this ends up being a task that could
Logically, this is something that I should outsource to an assistant. Outsourcing it to CardPointers is much cheaper.
Offers are searchable, meaning they are easier to use
Adding card-linked offers to all of your cards is one thing, but using them is another. If you have more than a few credit cards (or, realistically, more than one,) you’re probably not going to know which credit card any given offer is on, if it is expired, and how much cash back or how many points you can expect to get.
CardPointers solves that problem by letting you search all of the offers you’ve added to your cards.
If you, for example, search for Aldi and you’ve activated an offer for Aldi, you can see the details of the offer, the expiration date, and which card the offer is associated with.
I’ve, frankly, been surprised at how useful this is. I am sure that I’m using offers more often (and earning more cash back) than I did before, but this is hard to quantify.
Trackable offers can be huge for power users
Personally, I probably use 1-2 card-linked offers a month, so I really have no reason to spend time tracking my use of these offers.
However, I know many people who use card-linked offers to reduce their costs for their resale businesses, or who buy gift cards and sell them online. And if you’re using dozens of offers each month (often, at the same merchants) you need to keep track of when you’ve used your offers.
For most people who don’t use an app, the solution is a spreadsheet, which can be cumbersome. CardPointers offers a much more elegant solution.
One-time use offers can be marked as used with a simple toggle. And you can track the amount you use of offers that let you earn rewards over multiple purchases.
If I start increasing the number of card-linked offers I use, I will probably start using this feature more, but I can certainly see how being able to track offers can have huge value for many.
Concerns I’ve had and additional thoughts
Of course, not every app is perfect, and giving an app access to your banking information should give you some pause. Here are some additional thoughts about that.
I don’t like giving unfettered access to my bank accounts. With the CardPointers Chrome extension, I’ve set up the extension to only be able to access data on sites I’m visiting when I click the extension. This setting ensures that CardPointers only has access to what I expect them to see, which I like. I greatly prefer this approach to giving an app my banking credentials.
Auto-adding offers occasionally breaks. But I don’t fault CardPointers for this. What the extension is (probably) doing behind the scenes is using some sort of scraping engine read the details of the offers and to “click” each activation link on each offer it sees. When a bank’s website changes, things can break. It’s been my experience that, when things break, they generally get fixed within a few days.
I find some of the values CardPointers publishes for various miles and points to be inflated. Of course, this is a criticism that I have about pretty much every miles and points blog that publishes valuations, including the ones that I read and like. (Just don’t believe CardPointers when they tell you that a Chase point is worth 2.1 cents.)
CardPointers isn’t perfect, but then again, that’s an unreasonable standard. However, I do feel like CardPointers delivers on its promise of making card-linked offers easier and more valuable. I can give the app the access that it needs in a way that I feel comfortable with and it feels like the team is responsive and fixes things when they break.
Who can benefit from CardPointers?
If you’ve got a few cards and you are an active user of card-linked offers like Amex Offers and Chase Offers, getting a tool like CardPointers is probably going to be worth it for you. Here are the biggest advantages:
- You’ll save time by not adding offers manually to your cards, and by using the search and tracking features to find offers and track which ones you’ve used.
- You’ll earn more from card-linked offers because searching your added offers means that they’re going to be easier to use.
Would you pay $15 to not have to do an hour of mundane tasks each month? Well, if you spend half an hour or more thinking about managing your card-linked offers each month, then you’ll get at least that much value from CardPointers.
Would I pay for CardPointers?
As a content creator, many companies will offer access to their products and services for free. And CardPointers has provided me with a free subscription to try out all of the features of their app. (I point this out because I think it’s important to disclose if I’ve gotten a product or service for free.)
When it comes to paying an annual fee on a credit card or subscribing to a service, I try to ask myself if I’m getting value well in excess of what I’m paying. And this is often a high hurdle. Mostly because I’m cheap and have perhaps an irrational aversion to spending money.
But after my experience with CardPointers, I do see that the value is clearly there for me. So I would probably personally pay for CardPointers if I had to. I do like that (as of the time of publication) CardPointers offered a lifetime plan. That’s probably the plan I’d purchase.
Bottom line on CardPointers: A useful took that saves me time
CardPointers has been a tool that has saved me time and reduced a lot of complexity. Adding offers to cards, remembering which offers are on which cards, and (occasionally) tracking which offers are used are tasks that I’ve now outsourced to CardPointers.
Ultimately, I’m saving time and very likely earning more with my card offers. And that makes CardPointers worth it for me.
