Will wallets go the way of the buggy whip?

I just read the Bank of America and Visa are separatly running beta programs of payment technologies that allow you to make credit card purchases with your smartphone instead of using your credit card. This is already being used in Japan with success and seems like a logical evolution. Smartphones have the processing power, storage and connectivity capabilities that can provide better control and management of our personal information. For example, if our smartphone handles all our purchases, it could also hold a real time statement of all purchase info and match it to a personal budget program. It could manage reward programs and let us know that our next coffee is the tenth one and FREE!

There are other pushes to make wallets extict. The public transit in San Fran has been experimenting with an iPhone app instead of a passcard.

How long before your wallet is no more?

Probably sooner than we think!

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T