The founders of Cardstar must be psychic.

How else could they know how often I forget my Safeway, CVS, and Borders rewards cards?

Cardstar is a mobile app that generates a nifty image of your club or supersaver-type cards, with bar code images that neatly skirt the QR code integration challenge. Cardstar is scannable by ‘most merchants,’ including Petsmart, Blockbuster, and CVS.

In addition to big name corporate partners, users seem to like Cardstar too – the app has a 4+ rating in the iTunes store, with lots of comments about how great it works in the wild.

Cardstar is a free app (for now). Checking out all these free applications I’m beginning to wonder overall how mobile app builders will solve the monetization problem, and I certainly don’t want all my mobile apps to become Big-Brother esque data hunter/gatherers caching all my behavioral data and demographics to fuel a later rush to profitablity.

No offense to Cardstar, but I’ll be checking their terms of service (TOS) pretty carefully before using the app.

Back to why I really like the Cardstar app – you can carry it across the border.

The app works with loyalty card programs for over 190 companies in 3 countries (US, Canada, and the UK). Android and Blackberry fans, you’ll unfortunately have to carry your plastic a bit longer…versions for these two smartphones are in the works.

Other features ‘coming soon’ to Cardstar include merchant-driven special offers and coupons.

Ironically, this line of biz-dev puts Cardstar in a prime partnership/acquisition sweet spot for integration with other mobile companies like Tapjoy, but also with bigger web service providers like Yahoo!.

Whatever happens to Cardstar as the company grows out and grows up, I’m looking forward to leaving both paper coupons and plastic loyalty cards behind.

Too many things in this device-driven modern life weigh you down – tools to save money shouldn’t be one of them.