For a few years now though, a promise as lurked just over the horizon of a bright future in which you really only need ONE of those three: your phone. Technically, it's already supposed to be possible. NFC payments have been extant but underdeveloped for years now, and the technology can supposedly function as a key substitute as well. So while my smart phone may be a bit bigger than Captain Picard's lapel pin, I decided to see how many of the same functions it could take up.
So, my wallet contains:
- 2 IDs (Drivers License and work ID from a university I use to scam student discounts.)
- 4 credit and debit cards
- Some coupons
- 1 insurance card I keep on my in the hopes it will get me delivered to a decent hospital before they find out the coverage has lapsed. (C'Mon Obamacare!)
- 2 gift cards
- 2 library cards
- 2 transit cards
So, how many of these can I get rid of?
The first thing to go was one of the gift cards, since I realized it had originally come to me as an email. This is important. If you hate stuff, or love someone who does, always send gift cards electronically, so they don't have to carry more crap around. The other card I'll just have to try and spend quickly. Same goes for the coupons, though I have plans to deal with their ilk permanently in the future, which I will detail shortly.
Then I sent the transit cards to storage, since I don't actually live in the either of the places where they work. The cards I decided to try and get rid of next were the library cards. I did a simple search for "library card app" and guess what? It turns out that a lot of apps that let you digitize loyalty card programs can also take in library cards.
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| Boom. Not carrying those anymore! Library doesn't take digital cards? Burn it down. |
Whose next? Credit and debit cards. You will recall from earlier that I had 4 of them. But one of them, was this little bugger:
That card access a magic @Google account, to which I can add value using any other debit or credit card. Set it up properly, and I can ditch all the other cards. So I did. I still have them at home if I need them, but they're not bloating out my wallet any more. The tragedy though, is that I shouldn't even really need the card. The Google Wallet App does all the same things as the card, only it relies on NFC for communication, instead of a magnetic stripe. Some retailers accept NFC, but not anywhere near enough. And of course, no-one accepts digital IDs yet. I was tantalizingly close to zero wallet though, and so I decided to take the drastic step of being a semi-moral human being: I would stop carrying the cards I didn't really have a right to use - no more insurance, no more old staff ID. Which meant that the total contents of my billfold was now reduced to this:
Which is not zero, but it is the perfect amount to fit into a wallet phone case! Which...unfortunately they don't make any decent ones for my phone, because it is old and I am poor. When I get my next one though, I will no longer have to carry a separate wallet. That leaves only one enemy standing before me: my key chain. That unfortunately will have to wait till later, but don't worry, that fucker is done for.
