Discussion on:

Will your phone ever realistically replace your wallet?

I haven't heard the phrase "wallet-less future" before for, I think, the obvious reasons mentioned in the article: "We will likely still require identification for driving a car, boarding an airplane, and getting our frequent traveler points when checking in at the hotel."

None of that means the future for mobile payments is dim, however. While I wouldn't want to give my phone to a server at my favorite watering hole to pay my bill, I certainly don't mind hitting the funds transfer button at the check out counter of my local coffee shop. The wallet will be necessary until we begin embedding identity chips in our bodies, and until then we can enjoy other alternative payment methods.

Without rock-solid, provable methods for uniquely and infallibly identifying THE individual, then the rest is an exercise in avoidance.

Bad enough that I may be mugged for my wallet (which I do not carry), but I may have to worry about somebody extracting my chip... keep the chips out.

I don't even trust those wand things that are available in some areas and those can at least be kept in an RF shielded container when not in use.

If even a basic data plan now + cell contract can cost 100 dollars... Carrying my wallet around is free, I could be mugged every month and still save money vs using my cell phone.

Actually, I'd rather give my money to a mugger, at least they are honest about robbing you.

i would rather see a phone that fits in a card slot in my wallet.

I seriously doubt it.

- IF there is a well-designed, nicely usable multi-function phone (i.e. like an android or iphone of today)
- IF it has a wealth of robust download'able apps that are secure (i.e. UNLIKE android or iphone of today) where 99.99999 percent of them are well-vetted and provably malware/crimeware-free
- IF the banking/credit-card/merchant industries have cleaned up their act to where 'A' fraudulent transaction occurring within one years timeframe is a notable criminal event

When the state of things reach that point, I'll consider it.

Drivers license, debit and credit cards, a few dollars and some business cards.

I wouldn't mind removing the debit and credit cards, but considering vendors are charged a fee by the bank for accepting plastic, I refuse to use credit/debit for small transactions. I assume the same goes for electronic transfer of funds with a phone.

So that leaves the drivers license, a few dollars and business cards.

Nope, can't do it.

EFTPOS card, driver's licence and a sushi place stamp card.
Lucky in NZ we don't need cash or credit cards. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I carried either.
Using an EFTPOS phone instead of a card doesn't really bring much benefits I can see, unless it provides more information ( like banking details sans mobile data ).

Writing from the female perspective...Google Wallet is pretty dang cool. Will it replace my purse or wallet? Wallet, maybe, but not the purse. Unless they come up with mobile lipstick.... Seriously, I think eventually we will have everything on our phones, drivers license, insurance cards, credit and debit cards, you name it! Europeans have been using the mobile wallet for years, we are just behind because of all the power struggles between banks & credit card companies.

Probably even higher adoption in South Korea.

Kids swiping their phones boarding trains and other places.
Figure adoption is just a matter of time and also think that single purpose devices will come along with them.

Steamroller system. Everybody (Luddites excluded) who knows about it wants it - many with reservations - and those reservations will be resolved because of its advantages. I can remember a few years ago needing fuel for my car in France at 2:00 in the morning but the only stations open were pay at the pump and needed chip and pin; my card had no chip - no fuel . Now I prefer pay at the pump.
Get it right - then I want it!

How many people lose their phone? How many lose their wallet? Winner LEATHER!

Could epayment from a phone replace the half a dozen plastic cards in my wallet, yes. But the wallet, no.

As of this moment, it's still the case that your credit card's magnetic stripe contains unencrypted data and a card reader costs $20. Get something that can read magnetic fields from a sufficient distance, and voila.

I thought that every 2% usage fee by the credit card company would go toward pragmatic things, like new cards with updated systems...

Seems moot now.

Given the number of articles out there about concerns of bluetooth and wi-fi not being the best protected...

Heck, just be wary all the time. It's emotionally draining but this is the new normal. The old normal wasn't so great either, but I don't see things getting any better.

This brings back memories of the time in the late 1990s when I worked on multiple smartcard projects which included real pilots runs for both Visa and MasterCard that were meant to replace cash and small valued transactions (ie $5). They just simply didn't work. It is a lot quicker and easier just to pay with coins for your coffee and newspaper. Even though these transactions were mostly offline capture it was still too hard for the merchants to use. If it is anything like my mobile app eCoffeecard which most of the time always seems to have trouble connecting to the server then I can live without it.
It is always much simpler to punch a hole in a paper coffeecard or pay with cash rather than the tedium of unlocking your phone, finding the app, entering the amount paying for it etc etc.while the coffee queue gets longer and longer.

If you travel and get stuck in East Africa you pay with Air Time. Extracting money to your phone from your band and transferring it as air time for day to day payment is already an reality in East Africa. No wallet, no cash and no smart phone needed!

This technology is inevitable. However it will not attract the main user base until it's free to use (and it will be), we've done away with the clunky unlock - load app procedure and all you need to do is swipe the phone itself across a data terminal. That technology is already there - the mobile phone reports its postion to the satellite and the satellite 'knows' which phone it is with no intervention from the user at all. All the data terminal has to do is ID the phone. When we've perfected the technology so that the phone itself 'knows' who is holding it, then there'll be no stopping this. Your phone will be your ID, your bankroll, your driving licence etc. Silver linings always have their clouds however. This makes it very easy to governments to turn citizens into non-people, simply by switching it off.

Cash is accepted everywhere, by everyone. Electronic cash has been an idea for decades, it's just not going to happen in any useful form anytime soon. We already have a form of e-cash in eftpos cards but they are unsuited for small transactions due to the percentage paid to the card companies, and they are never going to give up their revenue stream for small transactions.

These apps bypass the eftpos card companies so do not incur the percentage drain; small transactions incur a higher percentage fee than large trasactions due to minimum charges so a large top up of an app costs the app owner less than dozens of smaller charges at point-of-sale. Unfortunately the apps now fail the ubiquitousness test i.e. different app for each place. Unless there is some way to either roll all these apps into one, which would automatically create a new eftpos like company, there needs to be a way to automatically launch the correct app for where you are, add in 20-30 places, each with their own app, and you have a security nightmare.

Putting the security concerns to one side (but not ignoring the blue whale in the room) it would be possible to automatically launch an app when you get near the end of the queue, using near-field communication to trigger the correct app, although that would irritate some people checking facebook. Combine that with a pre-pincode you could enter whilst queuing i.e. i'm about to pay for something and i am who i say i am so just authorise the payment when i get there and this should speed up use dramatically to the time it takes to swipe. Shops should like it as it would reduce the time required to make change which translates to fewer staff on tills with no reduction in throughput.

Add in the ability to pre-approve certain payments e.g. your daily bus fare or starbucks and it could become more convenient than cash. Just don't expect it anytime soon.

After having had my debit card hi-jacked twice in 2011, which I no longer have, cash is King. For a phone to replace my wallet is at best a novel, albeit totally silly, idea. Only those who like to play with toys and take financial risks will be suckered into this line of participation. For this type of idea to realize fruition there has to be a number of people that have a lot of time on their hands which, IMO, they could put to better use.

i will still have to carry my wallet for id

I can???t envision a scenario where we can routinely ???leave the wallet at home??? in the future."

You should have said "near future". Any science fiction fan can tell you: SF authors have been writing about wallet-less futures for at least the last 40 years. If you can't "envision" this possibility - can't see how it could happen - maybe you should be writing about other things.

As the technology advances, people and companies address all the shortcomings you mentioned. You don't think it is possible for your phone to be used as an identity "card"? Why not? All the same information stored on the magnetic strip of every card you have could just as easily be stored in the magnetic media inside your phone. Or it could be stored in the cloud and accessed by your phone. All that is missing is the "orders of magnitude" increase in security requirements to make it feasible. (Because "possible" is not always "feasible".)

All your arguments are feasibility based. As more people and business WANT to move the data out of their wallets, people and companies will invest time and money in making the electronic wallet future feasible as well as possible.

It's frustrating enough at ATMs where people cannot do multiple transactions without logging out, pushing the card back in, logging on, do one transaction, repeat, repeat, repeat. Now picture these techno idiots in front of you at a check out - what's going to be in your pocket?

At the TechCrunch NYC 2012 DISRUPT Conference US Federal CTO Todd Park announced a new initiative under "Digital Government" strategy for "The Presidential Innovation Fellows" named "The 20% Campaign".

The 20% Campaign is designed to provide a country-wide electronic monetary system all accessed with mobile smart devices, smart cards, and other methods (which could be as easily tracked by the Federal Government NSA, DHS, FBI, and DoD just as credit and debit cards are today).

See Presidential Innovation Fellows: The 20% Campaign @

http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/20campaign

The video "TechCrunch | Sound Bites" of Federal Government CIO Steven VanRoekel and CTO Todd Park discussing five new government technology initiatives under the White House program "Presidential Innovation Fellows" may be found @

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=5609668688341897264&gid=4387833&type=member&item=119007795&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch%2Ecom%2Fevents%2Fdisrupt-ny-2012%2Fsound-bites%2F%3Fsnapid%3D31018&urlhash=A9kV&goback=%2Egmr_4387833%2Egde_4387833_member_119007795

Under the MyGov, Blue Button of America, and Open Data Initiatives; your personnel information would be made available to whom ever the US Government deems necessary. See "Presidential Innovation Fellows" program @

http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows

Don't you feel safer and free from Federal Government and Private Sector Corporate Conglomerate invasions of privacy?

Do people really want to put all their eggs in one basket? You lose your phone, you lose more than just the phone.
It's like having your home land line, TV and Internet with one provider. If the connection dies you are scr?wed.

countries like kenya have proven that it is possible with service providers like safaricom,airtell,yu and orange earning huge revenues as a result.yes it is possible.

Those huge revenues are coming from their customers' pockets. Why should I pay someone to process a phone transaction when I can use cash for free?

The vendor pays, just like using a credit/debit card. Of course, ultimately the customer pays, but the cash price and credit/debit card price are suppose to be the same. Even though some vendors don't abide by it, that's what's in the "merchant's terms of service" for Mastercard and Visa.

I thought that's what I said.

If the cash price and the "plastic" price is the same, what's the difference? Whenever I need to replenish the cash in my wallet, I spend my time (and fuel) to go find it. Banks closed? Find an ATM? Does the ATM come with a fee? I think the last time I actually visited a bank was when I moved everything out of Bank of America and into a credit union a few years ago.

I am surprised by the lack of vision here. The problems Patrick raises are easily overcome. Off course the wallet can be repleaced. ID and other critical information can be taken care of with ample security and backup even with todays technologies. Cloud services spring to mind. As for the chicken and egg analogy; it really boils down to the rooster. That's the noisy guy on the sideline in case you wonder.

I think it depends on your definition of "future". Remember when ATM/Debit cards first came out? There were very few ATM machines and even fewer vendors that could process them as a debit. Now almost every merchant can work with them, even the vendors at the Farmer's Market, and there are ATM machines on just about every corner. As for checks - We're still using the check refill order that I recieved about ten years ago. The last, and about the only, check I wrote was for my dentist and that was only because I got a 5% discount for doing it. One can even purchase (actually it might be free) a plugin dongle for your iPhone or Andriod phone that will allow you to swipe credit/debit cards. Direct transfer via bluetooth will be next, if its not already here.

What I'm waiting for is the flying cars we were promised. I know there are a couple out there but they're lacking in performance and very expensive.

And, where are the friggin' sharks with laser beams!

The dongle is cheap, but check the fine print on the TV ads. There's a 2.5% or 3% charge for each transaction processed.

A 2.5% or 3% merchant charge is typical for any credit card purchase.

"Will your phone ever replace cash, debit cards, and credit cards?"

Doubtful, You would have to carry a lot of phones, and you would have to have a pawn shop handy to keep converting your phone to cash. And I doubt the pawn shop will pay you what you paid for the phone.
Doesn't seem like a good idea to me.