Take it to Akin: Credit card consolidation

Tired of carrying around a bunch of credit cards? Technology is now making credit card and membership card consolidation a reality.

The idea is to take all your credit cards and with a blue tooth app on your smart phone, load them into just one card.

Several products that do this are launching this spring.

The Stratos Card is a battery-powered card which can hold the information of unlimited amount of cards. However, with the exception of your three favorite cards, you need to have your smart phone nearby to use Stratos.

" It's called two step security identification; meaning you have to have the phone close to the card to be able to work," said

Technology Security Expert Juan Torres.

The Stratos card boasts of knowing what card it will use based on where you are. But Torres isn't so sure that's a good idea.

"What you're doing is pairing your spending habits with a GPS location. That sounds very convenient, but you're actually sharing your spending habits with a third party," Torres said.

A similar product, set to hit the market about the same time as Stratos, is Coin.

Like Stratos, you save the information from your credit, gifts and ATM cards onto a single card.

Coin can work without a smart phone nearby. But it can only hold up to eight cards.

"It's a very convent concept. However you are broadcasting a lot of information that could be of a concern," said Torres

Both the Stratos and the Coin cost about $100 a year. Both claim tight security.