Don't Know Which Card To Use? There's An App For That.

I have more than a half dozen credit cards in my wallet. A new app on my iPhone, Glyph, tells me which of these credit cards to reach for to get the most rewards when I'm buying groceries, getting gas, dining at restaurants or shopping at Macy's or CVS.

At least two of the credit cards I have, Discover and Chase Freedom, change their extra reward categories frequently. I have to say I'm good about signing up for those promotions and remembering whether this month it's gas and groceries or restaurants and department stores.

Downloading the Glyph app to my iPhone was easy enough, even for someone who is as technology-inept as I am at times. But when I went to use Glyph at the restaurant in D.C. where we had lunch on Saturday, I had forgotten my password so I couldn't log on. I had written my password down in my planner as I do all my passwords, but my planner was back home in Pennsylvania. It wouldn't do me any good. By the time I asked Glyph for password help, my husband had already paid the bill with our Discover card.

Do your cards make the list?

Once you download Glyph to your smart phone, it asks you to check which credit cards are in your wallet. Makes sense. How else can it tell you which is the best card to use when you're standing at the register or making a purchase online?

Glyph says it supports more than 250 business and consumer credit cards and is adding more daily. But when I signed up in mid-November, I couldn't find the exact two I use most often. They may have been there, just under another name, but I couldn't tell.

In an email exchange with Glyph CEO Mike Vichich, he says, "Glyph includes the top 18 credit issuers in the USA and over 260 credit cards, which covers greater than 90% of all transactions. Having said that, we are adding new cards every day. We have a feature in the app whereby users can inform us if a card is missing; we address those missing cards in prioritized fashion."

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