I have nothing against saving money, but there has to be a better way to do it than carrying a thick pocket full of frequent buyer cards, discount cards, and coupons. In this day and age, if merchants can't get together to create one card for each customer to house membership information for every store they visit, I just won't participate, even if it amounts to cutting off my nose to spite my face. Who needs all that mess and confusion in the checkout line?

In Korea, the use of mobile coupons is on the rise - an obvious solution that's even better than my dream solution of a single multi-purpose card. Mobile coupons, which have barcodes that can be scanned at shops (those equipped with barcode readers) and forwarded to friends, are especialy gaining popularity among younger people.

A couple of years ago, I recall some experimentation at CES with mobile coupons (for public transportation) and thought that by now, they'd be really big throughout the U.S. Here, we like our fancy phones, but seem to be very slow to adopt mobile technology for anything other than calling, texting and snapping photos.

Via Web 2.0 Asia.