I'll admit that my wallet has become somewhat of an albatross and while there is seldom any cash in it, it has grown to a size where friends and co-workers in the know refer to it as the "Costanza wallet" from Seinfeld lore.
It has occurred to me that most of the stuff we cart around in our wallets could easily be replaced by the now ubiquitous smartphones that we all have attached to our hips and that day couldn't come soon enough.
Try the exercise as I have by dumping out the contents of your wallet and think of a reason why anything that pours out of it could not be replaced by some utility or app on your smartphone. Cash aside, 90% of the remaining contents of your wallet are likely credit cards, debit cards, licenses, memberships, reward program cards, etc.. I have so much plastic in my wallet that a HazMat team would need to be dispatched if it ever caught fire.
The days of mobile payments are upon us. Payments by smartphone at checkouts will replace credit cards in much the same way that credit cards replaced cash (or at least acted as a substitute for those with none). It's worth noting that most people are fiddling with their smartphones while waiting at the checkout, anyway so this would simply be a logical progression. Hopefully, government bureaucrats will follow suit, allowing everything from library cards to driver's licenses to be replaced by the security, simplicity and privacy afforded by our smartphones. The god-like technology that has replaced our wristwatches, photo albums, home phones, GPS devices, calendars, calculators, and cameras should be able to easily conquer our wallets and purses, as well.
Perhaps the only item in a wallet that a smartphone can't replace is that thing we were warned as schoolboys never to carry in our wallets, anyway and if the reference confounds you, hopefully the lyrics from this song by The Extras will jog your memory.
