Cards, cards and more cards

It's amazing how many cards people carry around with them. Membership cards, discount cards, identification cards, library cards, bank cards, useful information cards... they're all there. Everyone wants to give you a card, that you can easily stick in your wallet because it's "so convenient". Of course, the result I've found is that you end up with your wallet busting with cards that you actually use maybe once a year, if ever. Then, you've got a whole bunch of old cards that you just can't bring yourself to throw away (what if you lose your current card for some reason, you could use your expired one in the meantime!). So I have no less than about 25 of these cards in my desk drawer, because they're nice -- souvenirs perhaps -- and you just dont' want to throw them out.

What if there was a better way? I understand things like credit cards, you need those and you can't do anything about that. But what about having some sort of "Universal Membership Card" that can serve as all of your non-critical non-identification cards... you know, your library card, your AAA card, your Costco card, everything. You could have this UMC that had your name on it, and some generic UMC number. Then ANY company who wants to use it as their form of id card, can use it. Give it a barcode, magnetic stripe, the works... anything anyone could possibly want. The good thing for the user is that you can have the same membership number for a whole bunch of different things. The good thing for the companies who use it... they save money by not needing their own cards, all they have to do is link into this card that everyone has already! It's perfect!

Suddenly your 25 cards or so, drop down to maybe 5 or so (Your UMC, but along with that you still need your credit cards, official identification, etc. But not every Joe-membership-person who wants to give you a card.)

Hello world! I hereby place this idea in the public domain... someone run with it! But don't profit off my idea or I'll sue your pants off! Muahahahah!