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The changing shape of my wallet …
Could I be comfortable having no wallet? Having no cash? Having to depend that every place I visit and every transaction I initiate will have the supporting technology up and running and secure?
March 30, 2016 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
After a lengthy journey through several states this month I have become acutely aware that my wallet isn't quite what it used to be.
No, it's not bulging with cash, but it's a little out of shape, all the same. I traveled on business attending several events and catching up with clients, so there are no complaints about the value derived. However, there were a couple of surprises.
As American as this may sound, and to borrow from a popular phrase, "what's in my wallet" is still important to me.
The cash required during my travels was significantly down from previous trips. For example, I used cash to operate a compressed air dispenser when a tire on our vehicle reported it low.
In Las Vegas, I pulled cash from my wallet to feed a slot machine one night, but I might as well have ignored that temptation. And I pulled out cash at a coffee shop to pay for a latte when their payment network was down.
For emergencies, entertainment and as a backup, cash continues to be hard to beat. And yet, the shape of my wallet has changed noticeably.
At no time during this trip did I have more than $20 "in case" on me — and this isn't a reflection either of how responsible my wife thinks I am. That was decided a long time ago and not in my favor.
However, the number of plastic cards I carry has climbed appreciably. The bulk of them? Loyalty cards.
However, perhaps the biggest contribution to the sagging, somewhat distorted appearance of my wallet was the number of paper receipts I was collecting each day. In a society that decries the unnecessary use of paper, what is going on here?
Well … I use credit cards when traveling, but I still need to collect receipts as they remind me of what I purchased and provide a backup should my friendly payments solution somehow lose the records.
And this makes me think of what future virtual wallets might look like. If we eliminate everything we carry in our wallets today and rely solely on our smartphones, where's the backup?
One of the first panel sessions at last month's ATMIA US conference gave us one perspective on virtual wallets.
Since 2010, a steady flow of headlines have proclaimed that "this will be the year of the virtual wallet" and that the "age of cybercash," (a reference in Newsweek that dates back to 1994) will soon be here.
During the panel session it was pointed out that even with Apple's marketing prowess, the take-up of ApplePay has been unimpressive; only 2 percent of new iPhone 6 users enable ApplePay, and few of those go on to use it in any regular manner.
Certainly, the Apple business model is not going to open the floodgates to a new revenue source with Apple Pay, which, it turns out, generates a lot less income than any other Apple service, such as iTunes.
Even with all the hype and promotion of the past decade (and longer), there's still no compelling argument to leave our wallets at home and transact business from our smartphones.
In October 2015, McKinsey & Co. published the report, "McKinsey on Payments." In the chapter titled "16 in 2016: Trailblazing trends in global payments," the first bullet item states that, "as shopping moves in-app, digital payments displace cash."
The authors of the paper argue that:
The persistent strengths of cash — convenience (cash is versatile and widely accepted), control (cash is final and spend is limited to cash in wallet) and value (it's free, at least in appearance) — vanish in a digitizing world.
But are we seeing this in practice?
As with many technologies, the success of virtual wallets, virtual currencies, virtual banks and the cross-channel integration of loyalty programs depends on their becoming an all-in solution.
Everyone must participate, from individuals to retailers to service providers to infrastructure — even to the shoeshine provider and the person who does the final toweling-down of my vehicle at the car wash.
Without this buy-in, we'll have to leave home with both our smartphone and our physical wallet, duplication that I am already doing anyway, as I am acutely aware.
We all like to think that we are making progress, and those of us close to the retail banking sector like to think that FIs are right in there leading the change.
However, my overstuffed wallet bulging with paper receipts and stacked with more plastic than I thought I would ever need is so much a part of me that as I leave the front door, my left hand always checks that it's in my left pocket — even as my right hand checks to be sure that my smartphone is in the other pocket.
Could I be comfortable having no wallet? Having no cash? Having to depend that every place I visit and every transaction I initiate will have the supporting technology up and running and secure?
It may simply be a generational thing, but for the time being, I am happy with the shape my wallet is in. And from where I stand, so are a huge number of my fellow Americans!
photo istock
About Richard Buckle
Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.
