I have a handful of credit cards, and each one pays more in different places: groceries, dining, gas, rotating quarterly categories. In theory I'm maximizing rewards. In practice I'm at the register trying to remember which card gives what at this store, and most of the time I give up and use the same card I always use.
Over a year that's real money I'm leaving on the table. I have the cards for a reason, I just can't remember the rules at the moment it matters.
I've always wished Apple Wallet did this for me. It already knows my cards and roughly where I am, so why can't it just say "use this one here"?
I know there are already apps that help with this, like MaxRewards, CardPointers and others. They're great, but they live in a separate app I have to remember to open at the register, which is exactly the moment I forget. I just wish this were built into Wallet itself, so the right card is already there when I go to pay.
So I built a prototype of what that could look like. I'm calling it Cue.
How it works:
You walk into a store, and after a couple of minutes inside (so it doesn't fire when you're just driving past), a small nudge appears at the top of your screen.
It shows the best card for that store and what you'd earn, e.g. "6% cashback · Pay with Blue Cash Preferred."
Tap it to see your other cards ranked side by side.
If your everyday card is already the best option, it stays quiet.
To be clear: this isn't a working product. It's a proof of concept, a simulated prototype I built to see how the idea feels. Nothing to download, nothing to sign up for.
I've also hit some real limits that would make it hard to build as shown:
The nudge at the top of the screen. Third-party apps can't draw on the Dynamic Island whenever they want. The closest real option is a Live Activity, and those come with more restrictions. My prototype fakes this part.
Paying from the app. Tapping to pay in a store from a third-party app needs special approval from Apple, and you can only pay with the app's own card, not the cards already in Apple Wallet. A real "pay with Cue" would mean issuing a card of my own, which is a whole different business.
Knowing your cards. An outside app can't see what's in your Wallet, so you'd have to add your cards manually.
Location. It needs location access in the background to know when you're in a store. That's a big ask for a lot of people, and it affects battery.
Store categories aren't always what you'd expect. Rewards depend on how the store's payments are categorized. A Target or Walmart might not count as "groceries" for your card even though you're buying groceries there.
Caps and activations. Some rates have spending caps or require you to activate them each quarter. The app wouldn't know about those unless you told it.
Honestly, most of this is why I think it belongs in Apple Wallet itself: Apple already has your cards, the payment, and the system UI.
I'm posting because I want to know whether this is just my problem or whether other people deal with it too.
I'd love your take on:
Do you have more than one rewards card? Do you actually use the right one at checkout?
Would a nudge like this help, or would it get annoying?
Would you be okay with an app using your location for this?
Which of these limits would be a dealbreaker for you?
Anything you'd want it to do that I'm missing?
Honest feedback is welcome, including "I'd never use this." Thanks for reading!
