Many casinos do this for people coming in the door who they do not want to have standing in line at the card service desk when they could be at a machine losing money. The best example for this would be bus groups. When a bus of people arrive at the casino (in Las Vegas, at an indian casino, in Atlantic City, or a riverboat) instead of having a group of 40-or-so folks get in line, they can give each of them a temp catrd and tell them they are earning points when they use it. When the players have time during their stay, they can take the temp card and have any points on it transfered to a regular card in their name. The casinos want people to use the cards because if they figure putting points on the card is valuble to the player, they may play a little more, and they may keep their play at that casino in the future. The point of the cards in to get people to keep coming back. There are also cases of a slot host handing out temp cards to people they see playing a machine without a card. This case is another where they want the player to take the temp in for a regular card later. And get on the mailing list. When I was at the Palms last year, I was in line to get another card when a counter person came out and said the computers were having a little problem, and since they could not issue cards for a short time, she gave everybody in line a temp card.