The economy may or may not be picking up, but one way or another, the fat wallet is becoming a thing of the past. Smartphones and mobile payment apps and devices are chipping away at the need to carry cash. Designing brothers, Aaron Melander and Erik Melander of Supr Good Co., encourage dropping bills, coins, and receipts to live a simpler, lighter life.
The Melanders have designed a super slim wallet for minimalists and technocrats alike. Besides minimalist living, a love of pancakes inspired the brothers’ design for a wallet that holds a stack of cards only. The wallet, appropriately named Slim, is 3mm thick (less than 1/8th of an inch) and made entirely of elastic. Slim stretches to wrap around as many cards as necessary and the brothers say that the lean material will let the wallet “breeze through” RFID (radio-frequency identification) scanners.
The designing brothers emphasize that the product is entirely designed and made in the United States. The raw materials are from a 60-year old elastic manufacturer located in Rhode Island and the wallets will be hand made in Minneapolis. Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, the project is about 20 days from its goal to cover a first production run.
Internet and tech giants like Google and Microsoft are showing interest and investment in mobile payment systems. Square, the mobile payment company with the most buzz — even if not the most business — has just announced a partnership with Starbucks. The challenge for companies hoping to profit from mobile payment, as Brian X. Chen writes for the NYTimes, is to figure out what kind of system is most attractive to consumers and merchants.
While the companies work towards a completely wallet free future, we’ll still need to carry around a few credit, insurance, and identification cards.
Via: DesignTaxi, Kickstarter
