What the future holds for your wallet

In today’s digital age many of us live by our smart phones. What about taking your wallet virtual?

Some consumers love the idea of trading a wallet packed with credit cards, receipts and cash, for a simple tap of your Smartphone. But for others, the mobile wallet has been slow to catch on.

Our smart phones are connected with almost everything we do; our friends, our photos and our work.

The idea of ditching plastic and cash seems like a good match for our hyper connected society but mobile wallets have been relatively slow to catch on - perhaps because the market just isn’t there yet.

"There’s not a single way that you can use the wallet that you can go to every store or use it on every phone. There are a lot of different things going on, they're still kind of shaking out how you're going to be using a mobile wallet," says Lisa Gerstner of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Right now there are two major ways these virtual wallets operate; cloud-based, like square, where users link their accounts and pay with the touch of a button and the tap and pay method, near field communication, like Google wallet.
Consumers, however, haven’t latched on more often opting for standard paper and plastic.

“The value angle is a big one here, because a lot of people are pretty happy using their debit or credit cards just to swipe, it's not hard to do,” said Gerstner.

That’s why some mobile wallets are pushing to integrate things like store loyalty cards and offering incentives for use.

There's also some apprehension among consumers. Storing so much financial information on a smartphone can be scary for some users.

Experts recommend adding an extra layer of pin protection before your wallet goes viral and download a service that can disable your phone remotely if its lost or stolen.