Wallets are not cool. Go digital.

For a growing number of young people, a wallet full of cash and cards is as out of fashion as millennials’ habit of tucking their shirts into their pants, ankle socks and skinny jeans. The ideal is to only have one smartphone with you. Iykyk – “If you know, you know” (If you know, you knowin English), for those who don’t know.

I, Brian Chen, a grizzled 39-year-old technology columnist, am not one of those who know. Parting with my wallet, which contains essential items like my driver’s license, is an unfathomable mystery. So in an effort to get hip again, I recruited my colleague Yiwen Lu, 23, to ask young people how they live like this, and then took the plunge myself.

In giving up my physical wallet, I join young people like Ruby Hegab, a 19-year-old student from Fremont, California. As soon as she got her first credit card last year, she decided to use her iPhone to pay for groceries, parking meters and restaurant meals, as well as to carry her insurance cards.

“If a store doesn’t accept Tap To Pay, I don’t trust it,” says Hegab. But that rarely happens, because the overwhelming majority of merchants she visits, including big box stores and mom-and-pop shops, now accept some form of mobile payment using services like Apple Pay and Venmo.

In a survey of just over 2,500 Americans about digital payments, some 80% of Gen Z respondents reported using mobile wallets, and of those, half were eager to use their phones, not than to pay, according to recent data from Pymnts Intelligence, a research firm that studies the trade.

Young people are increasingly using their phones for purposes that older adults would use a traditional wallet for, such as carrying documents like driver’s licenses, boarding passes and event tickets. Some of these digital items can be added to Apple and Google wallet apps, while others, like insurance cards, can be downloaded through third-party apps.

Without a wallet for a week, I used my phone to go shopping, go to bars, restaurants and movies, and even buy crab from a fisherman’s boat. The phone sufficed in almost all of these situations, although paying for dinner proved more complicated and using a digital driver’s license to buy wine at the grocery store was not possible.

If you want to get rid of your wallet or simply reduce the clutter in your pocket, here’s what you need to know.

Payments

In many stores, Android and iPhone users can use Google Pay and Apple Pay by tapping their phones on the readers next to the cash register. Many small businesses, like food trucks, accept payments through third-party apps like Venmo, which let you scan a barcode to send money.

However, there is an inherent risk when relying entirely on a mobile wallet. Abi Hoyer, 21, of Punta Gorda, Fla., said she doesn’t carry a wallet for security reasons: In the event of an assault, a thief would only have her phone. The fact remains that thieves could make payments and withdraw money from your account if they force you to share your passcode.

That’s why it’s important for iPhone users to enable a new security feature in Settings called Device Theft Protection (Stolen Device Protection, in English), which prevents access to data such as passwords and stored credit cards when the device is in an unknown location. As for Android users, they need to know the steps to lock and purge device data in case of theft.

Additionally, not all businesses accept mobile payments. Abi Hoyer learned this the hard way at Walmart when she discovered she couldn’t pay for her items and didn’t have her full credit card number to sign up for the store’s wallet, Walmart Pay. One solution: Password manager apps like 1Password and Bitwarden can securely store sensitive data, including credit card numbers, in case you need to look it up.

Jillian Gillespie, 27, of Chicago, switched to Apple Pay after losing her wallet more than a year ago. This works well for fast food restaurants where you pay at the counter, but at sit-down restaurants where servers drop off a bill and expect to use a credit card, she sometimes has to rely on friends to pay. In these cases, she usually uses Venmo to pay back her friends.

I encountered similar problems. Out of three restaurants, only one brought me a reader so I could use my phone to pay, while the others asked me for a credit card, forcing my wife to pay.

Insurance cards and other documents

Scanned documents or photos of important documents like health and car insurance cards are now widely accepted as substitutes for authentic documents. Some insurers offer their digital cards through their apps, which can be added to your mobile wallet. However, not all insurance cards work this way and it can be difficult to find them at short notice. You don’t want to be forced to look at photos or find the right app to charge your insurance card after a car accident, for example.

I’ve found that the easiest way to make insurance cards easier to find is to attach images of all the cards to a digital note stored on your phone.

On iPhones, you open the insurance card photo, tap the button in the lower left corner, and select the Notes app to save the image as a new note. Then rename the note “Insurance Cards”.

Likewise, Android users can use the note-taking app Google Keep. In Keep, at the bottom of the page, tap “add image”. Then choose your insurance card photo and label the note.

Other types of cards and documents, like my Clipper transit card, movie tickets, and gift cards, were all pretty simple to scan: by tapping the “Add to Apple Wallet” button. , I loaded them into the application Wallet on my iPhone.

Identification

Digitized versions of driver’s licenses are still relatively new and are being tested in several states, including California, Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah. This is where the mobile wallet falls short.

In California, for example, you sign up for a digital driver’s license through the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ app. The app generates a temporary barcode that can be scanned to verify your age and identity. Airports in some states now post signs saying they will accept digital ID cards from people who have signed up for the Transportation Security Agency’s PreCheck program — but many states have not yet participated in this experience, which makes it impractical to leave your driver’s license at home.

The digital ID card is not yet an acceptable substitute for the physical driving license. The California DMV says law enforcement cannot accept the Mobile Driver’s License if stopped, and the Arizona Division of Motor Vehicles says people must always carry one. physical identity.

When purchasing alcohol at several grocery stores last week, cashiers were unaware of California’s digital driver’s license and did not have a reader to check the barcode. At a cocktail bar, a bouncer refused digital ID cards and demanded physical cards.

It is therefore best to continue carrying a physical ID. To do this, without carrying a wallet, you can do like some young people and place the ID card between the phone and the case. I found this solution flawed, as the card brings the phone closer to the edges of the case, making the screen more susceptible to damage if dropped.

After a week, I opted for what seemed to me to be the best solution: a magnetic wallet that attaches to the back of my phone and holds only two cards – my ID and a credit card .

I felt like I was cheating. Hegab, a 19-year-old woman, admits, however, that she uses a similar card holder to carry only her driving license.

As soon as digital driving licenses work everywhere, she will get rid of them.

This article was originally published in the New York Times.

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