Starbucks, on the corner
$6.40 spent
Use Amex Gold.
4x restaurants
$0.20instead of $0.05
+$0.15 recovered at this counter
A standalone store codes as dining. The kiosk inside the supermarket would not.
Which card do I swipe?
Know exactly which card to use before you pay.
CardSwipe finds your best rewards card for every purchase. Add the cards you carry, and it tells you which one to swipe. No bank login. No card numbers.
CardSwipeLaunchCardSwipe is on the App Store Thursday, November 5 at 1:00 AM Pacific.
App StoreValid
from11/05 1AM PT
from11/05 1AM PT
At Whole Foods Market
American Express
Gold Card
AMEX
4xon groceries
Chase
Sapphire Preferred
VISA
American Express
Blue Cash Preferred
AMEX
Citi
Double Cash
MASTERCARD
Use American Express Gold. Sample wallet; your answer comes from the cards you add.
442US cards with their earn rules. Add yours by name.
- American Express Gold Card
- Chase Sapphire Preferred
- Citi Double Cash
- Capital One Venture X
- Amex Blue Cash Preferred
- Chase Freedom Unlimited
- Citi Custom Cash
- Capital One Savor
- Wells Fargo Active Cash
- Bilt Mastercard
- Amazon Prime Visa
- Chase Sapphire Reserve
- Discover it Cash Back
- Citi Strata Premier
- Wells Fargo Autograph
- Chase Freedom Flex
- Apple Card
- Costco Anywhere Visa
Three seconds at a counter
You add the cards you carry
By name, in under a minute. No card numbers, no bank login, nothing linked.
Three inputs, none of them a password
- First
You name the cards you carry
Search the issuer, pick the product. Amex Gold, Sapphire Reserve, whatever is actually in your wallet. That is the entire setup, and it takes under a minute.
- Then
The rules are already loaded
Category multipliers, quarterly rotators, spend caps, activation state. CardSwipe knows what your cards earn, so you never type a reward rate.
- From then on
The answer arrives before you do
Walk up to a counter and the Lock Screen already shows the card to reach for. Open the app only when you want to check the ranking yourself.
Most card apps read your accounts
Most reach the answer through your bank login. CardSwipe asks which cards you carry, and nothing else. This is the whole ledger.
Why it works without a loginOther apps ask for
CardSwipe asks for
Bank username and password
Never asked
Account balance
Never asked
Full transaction history
Never asked
Card numbers, CVV, expiry
Never asked
Credit score
Never asked
—
The cards you carry, typed in by product name
—
Merchant location, used to name the store and never stored
Running total collected by CardSwipe$0.00, zero credentials
The questions behind the answer
- Does Target count as a grocery store?Target codes as a superstore, not a supermarket, so grocery multipliers do not apply. What earns instead, and which stores do count.
- Best credit card for groceriesHow grocery rewards actually work: the rates worth carrying, the annual caps that end them, and the stores that never count.
- What happens when you hit a rewards capSpending caps quietly turn a bonus card into a base-rate card. How to tell when you have crossed one, and what to carry afterwards.
- Does Costco count as a grocery store?Costco codes as a warehouse club, so supermarket bonuses do not apply. Which cards it accepts, and what earns most at the warehouse and the pump.
On the wrist already out at the terminal
The same ranking on Apple Watch, for when the phone stays in a pocket.
- Best card
- The card to use where you are, its rate, and what you would use instead.
- Wallet
- Every card you carry, ranked for this stop.
- Offers
- Credits and offers by the deadline that comes first.
- Categories
- The best card for each kind of spend, without a store.
Made for the ten seconds before you pay
Open it in the queue, or let the map find the store. The answer is one line, with the rest of your wallet ranked under it.
Three inputs, none of them a password
Setup is a list of card names. Everything after that is rules CardSwipe already keeps. See the whole sequence.
First
You name the cards you carry
Search the issuer, pick the product. Amex Gold, Sapphire Reserve, whatever is actually in your wallet. That is the entire setup, and it takes under a minute.
Then
The rules are already loaded
Category multipliers, quarterly rotators, spend caps, activation state. CardSwipe knows what your cards earn, so you never type a reward rate.
From then on
The answer arrives before you do
Walk up to a counter and the Lock Screen already shows the card to reach for. Open the app only when you want to check the ranking yourself.
Try it against a counter you actually stand at
The same arithmetic the app runs, on a sample wallet. See every screen in the app.
Example wallet of five cards: Blue Cash Preferred, Amex Gold, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Citi Double Cash and Capital One Venture X. Pick a counter and watch which one wins.
You walk into
Whole Foods Market
GroceriesUse Blue Cash Preferred.
6% US supermarkets
$6.00back per $100 spent
- Blue Cash Preferred6% US supermarkets$6.00
- American Express Gold4x US supermarkets$3.20
- Citi Double Cash2% everywhere$2.00
- Capital One Venture X2x everything$1.60
- Chase Sapphire Reserve1x everything else$0.80
Points counted at 0.8¢, the conservative default you can change in Settings.
Reliable coding. Codes reliably as a US supermarket. Blue Cash Preferred earns 6% on the first $6,000 of US supermarket spend each year, then 1%. Amex Gold covers the next $25,000 at 4x.
Lock Screen
Saturday, June 14
9:41
CardSwipe
Use Blue Cash Preferred
Whole Foods Market, 6% US supermarkets
~$6.00 back per $100
Apple Watch
Best card
Blue Cash Preferred
6% US supermarkets
+$2.80 vs next
Whole Foods Market: use Blue Cash Preferred at 6% US supermarkets, worth about $6.00 per $100, $2.80 more than American Express Gold. Codes reliably as a US supermarket.
Most card apps read your accounts
Most reach the answer through your bank login. CardSwipe asks which cards you carry, and nothing else. This is the whole ledger.
Why it works without a loginOther apps ask for
CardSwipe asks for
Bank username and password
Never asked
Account balance
Never asked
Full transaction history
Never asked
Card numbers, CVV, expiry
Never asked
Credit score
Never asked
—
The cards you carry, typed in by product name
—
Merchant location, used to name the store and never stored
Running total collected by CardSwipe$0.00, zero credentials
One day, six counters, five cards
Scroll from morning to night. The wallet never changes; the right card changes at almost every stop.
7:10 am, so far today
$0.20
$0.15 of it is money the card in your pocket would have missed.
Shell, on the way in
$52.00 spent
Use Blue Cash Preferred.
3% US gas stations
$1.56instead of $0.42
+$1.14 recovered at this counter
The travel card is the habit here, and it earns a third as much.
Lunch, two blocks over
$18.00 spent
Use Amex Gold.
4x restaurants
$0.58instead of $0.14
+$0.44 recovered at this counter
Forty-four cents is not a life change. Five lunches a week is.
Whole Foods Market
$214.00 spent
Use Blue Cash Preferred.
6% US supermarkets
$12.84instead of $1.71
+$11.13 recovered at this counter
The big one: same trolley, same queue, eleven dollars different at the terminal.
Delta, booked direct
$412.00 spent
Use Chase Sapphire Reserve.
4x flights booked direct
$13.18instead of $3.30
+$9.88 recovered at this counter
Booked on the airline's own site. Through a travel site the same fare earns 1x.
Target, for the school run
$63.00 spent
Use Citi Double Cash.
2% everywhere
$1.26instead of $0.50
+$0.76 recovered at this counter
Superstore, not supermarket. No grocery bonus, whatever is in the cart.
By the end of the day
$29.62
recovered across six counters, $23.50 of it from swaps you would not have made on your own.
Repeat that week after week and it is the difference between a card that sits in a wallet and one that pays for itself.
A sample day run on the beta build with the five-card wallet. Figures use published issuer terms at a conservative 0.8¢ a point, against a single card carried for everything.
On the wrist already out at the terminal
The same ranking on Apple Watch, for when the phone stays in a pocket.
- Best card
- The card to use where you are, its rate, and what you would use instead.
- Wallet
- Every card you carry, ranked for this stop.
- Offers
- Credits and offers by the deadline that comes first.
- Categories
- The best card for each kind of spend, without a store.
The questions behind the answer
The rules that decide which card wins are public, and mostly unread. All 32 guides.
- Does Target count as a grocery store?Target codes as a superstore, not a supermarket, so grocery multipliers do not apply. What earns instead, and which stores do count.
- Best credit card for groceriesHow grocery rewards actually work: the rates worth carrying, the annual caps that end them, and the stores that never count.
- What happens when you hit a rewards capSpending caps quietly turn a bonus card into a base-rate card. How to tell when you have crossed one, and what to carry afterwards.
Before you install it
The questions people ask first. For anything else, email hello@cardswipe.app.
When is CardSwipe on the App Store?
Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 1:00 AM Pacific. Until then the beta is open on TestFlight, and cardswipe.app/download always points at whichever one is current.
What do I need to run it?
An iPhone on iOS 18 or later. The Apple Watch app comes with it and needs watchOS 11 or later. Cards are US consumer cards at launch.
Which cards does it know?
442 US cards, each with its published earn rules: category multipliers, caps and rotating categories. You find yours by issuer or product name. Corrections to a card's rules reach the app without waiting for an App Store update.
Does CardSwipe need my bank login?
No. You type in the names of the cards you carry, such as Amex Gold or Chase Sapphire Reserve. CardSwipe never asks for a bank username, password, card number, balance or transaction history.
How does it know which card wins at a store?
CardSwipe keeps the published earn rules for each card: category multipliers, quarterly rotators, spend caps and activation state. It matches the merchant to a category, applies your point valuation, and ranks your wallet by cash-equivalent return.
What does it do with my location?
Location is used on the device to name the merchant you are standing at, so the widget can answer before you unlock the phone. It is not kept as a history and is not sent anywhere as a record of where you shop.
How accurate are the reward rates?
Rates come from published issuer terms and are shown as estimates, with the cap or exclusion stated alongside. Where merchant coding is uncertain, such as a coffee kiosk inside a grocery store, CardSwipe says so rather than guessing.
How does CardSwipe make money?
Not yet. There are no affiliate links and no paid placement anywhere on this site today. When apply links do arrive, CardSwipe may be paid when someone is approved for a card, each link will be labelled where it appears, and rankings will stay computed from published issuer terms rather than from what a card pays us.
Know the card before you reach the register
CardSwipe is on the App Store Thursday, November 5. Until then the beta is open on TestFlight: install it, add the cards you carry, and check the answer at the next counter you stand at.
No bank login. No card numbers. Ever.