While I rather like the notion of less things to carry, I don’t foresee leaving home with my phone rather than my wallet to happen for another fifty years or so. It’s just not practical enough, even if you’re surrounded by modern technology.

There’s really two reasons for that. 

One is my Driver’s License, a fairly important piece that while in the surface it might seem old hat, thanks to modern requirements has more to it than a reference number for a database. Or as I like to remember it, renewing my license was a pain in the ass due to stricter prove who you are requirements than when mine has been originally issued and the chipping of personal identification.

Another is that contactless payments have been a bout slow to catch on. Newer terminals haven’t been uncommon where I live, thanks to America becoming a little less stone aged about swipe versus stick processing. But being able to talk my phone, or my card which does that too, isn’t offered in enough places I frequent to be able to skip it. Thus if I’m going to pay for something, I’ll probably have need of my wallet anyhow.

There’s also the bonus that the cards in my wallet don’t require managing a power source the way a phone or smart watch does. And sadly, those imprint machines still exist in the wild for when computerized payment processing systems go wonkers. But having to carry a card, or even more annoyingly a coin purse, beats the dead phone induced trouble this article described.