Features
What Stapel does
One promise: the cashier scans it first time. Everything below is in service of that.
The images here are sketches, not screenshots. Real screenshots arrive with the first release; a mocked-up screenshot is exactly the kind of small dishonesty this app cannot afford.
Two widgets, one idea
The wide widget (4×2) normally shows the cards you use most. Walk into a shop it knows and it becomes that card: brand header, full barcode, the number in readable digits. Zero taps between you and the code.
The small widget (2×2) only reorders, nearest shop on top. That "becomes" is a switch; off, the card simply moves to the top.
Quick Settings tile
Two gestures from a locked screen to a barcode. The tile retargets to the same card as the widget.
Launcher shortcuts
Four dynamic shortcuts on a long press of the app icon, with the shop you are standing in first.
Arrival detection
Opt-in. Off by default. Three modes, and you pick.
| Mode | What it uses | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Off | No location at all | Nothing. The widget shows what you use most |
| Only while the app is open | Coarse foreground location, nearest shop first | No background permission, no battery cost |
| In the background too | Android's proximity alerts on the ~20 nearest stores | Roughly 1 to 2 percent of battery a day, and it says so on the screen |
Underneath this is LocationManager.addProximityAlert() with a radius of
about 150 metres, re-armed on the nearest stores whenever you move meaningfully. Not
Google's Geofencing API, no Firebase, no fused location. Your location does not leave
the device.
On arrival the widget changes, the tile retargets and one notification fires. That notification is probably the most useful part: nobody is looking at their home screen while walking into a shop.
Three kinds of card
Loyalty card
Points cards and member passes. Brand colour and icon from the catalogue, or your own photo of the physical card.
Gift voucher
With an expiry date and a warning ahead of it. The balance is text you maintain; Stapel never pretends to know an amount it cannot verify.
Membership
Paid subscriptions such as Pathé Unlimited get a renewal date and a nudge thirty days ahead, so cancelling stays possible.
Getting cards in
Scan with the camera
On the device itself. Reads damaged, angled and badly lit codes. What the scanner reports always beats what the catalogue guessed.
From your photo roll
A screenshot from another app just works. In bulk too: select every screenshot at once, Stapel walks through them and you confirm.
pkpass
Apple Wallet's open format. The clean route off an iPhone, and the only real interchange standard that exists here.
By hand
Type the number, pick the chain, done. The catalogue suggests a barcode format; that is a hint, not an assumption.
Importing from Stocard or Klarna is not possible. No export exists. Catima has had six years and every motivation to build one and has not. What does work: screenshot every card in the old app and import them in bulk.
Organising and finding things
Store finder
Which branches of a chain are near you, from the same database that feeds arrival detection. No map view, no request to anywhere.
Folders and manual order
Drag cards where you want them. No algorithm that knows better.
Pin a shop yourself
If the shop is not in the database, pin it. That works for the gym round the corner too, which is in no catalogue anywhere.
Brand catalogue
49 Dutch chains researched, of which 39 carry a card: 36 loyalty programmes and 3 memberships. Those 39 are in the app with their colour and icon; the other ten run nothing, and are listed precisely so the app does not suggest them.
The app ships no brand logos by default. Real logos arrive later as a separate, disabled pack, only for chains that gave written permission.
Six of those programmes were renamed in 2025 or 2026. An outdated name or a wrong colour is a real bug: report it.
Backup and moving phones
An encrypted export to a file you choose, and a read-back on the new device. No cloud, no key held by us, no account.
Android separately does Auto Backup, which puts a copy in your Google account. The app names that and you can switch it off; how is on the privacy page.
Accessible, and Android-native
Accessible from day one
TalkBack labels on everything, touch targets of at least 48 dp, and state is always a word as well, never only a colour.
Dark mode and Material You
The app picks up your wallpaper colours where Android offers them, and falls back cleanly to its own palette below Android 12.
What is deliberately absent
- No points or stamp counters. Stapel cannot verify a balance, so it will not lie about one.
- No offers feed. That is the reason the other apps are free.
- No Google Wallet integration. It needs an issuer account and a server that signs tokens. Both are precisely what this app does not have.
- No Wear OS in version 1. A watch screen is too small and too dim for a till scanner.
- No pro tier and no adverts. Free, with the option to donate.