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I crave minimalism. So, Coin interests me, but I don’t think it’s for me. Here are some quick thoughts on Coin.

• If you have more than one credit card, the easiest way to get down to carrying one card is cancel the other ones. I have two active¹ cards: a debit card from my bank (which is accepted like a Visa card) and an American Express card which has a yearly cash back bonus (and important: I don’t carry a balance month-to-month, period).
• If you use Coin and you find yourself at a place that has to imprint the credit card, you’re out of luck. Hope you brought some cash.
• $100 or even $50 (the pre-launch sale price) seems high for this convenience. Especially if the card has to be replaced every 2 years because it runs on a non-rechargeable battery.
• I’ll still need to carry my driver’s license; this isn’t for that.
• I’ll still need to carry my transit card. It has a chip on it, so I don’t think it can be mimicked by Coin.
• I’ll still need to carry my HID building access security card.

So, even if I were to buy one of these — effectively (at launch sale price) a $25/year (due to the battery lifespan) convenience fee — I’d still need a decent wallet to hold everything. I couldn’t get away with a slim phone card pocket case, for instance.

No, I think the future looks something more like using Passbook or even NFC… so, no physical cards. Bluetooth LTE identification for building access. A federal and state-approved method for presenting your identification through with phone. Maybe then you could just carry one card; one that serves as a backup in case you lose or damage your phone.