In the field of electronic wallets, it looks like Coin has a competitor. Wocket, from NXT-ID, can store up to 10,000 cards, including credit cards and store loyalty cards. The Wocket is smaller than the average wallet and powered by a single coin cell battery. Users just swipe their credit cards into the device to record them in the Wocket’s memory. Cards that use barcodes instead of magnetic strips – like loyalty cards and voter registration cards – can be scanned in as well. When the user wants to make a purchase or use a card, they choose a stored card from the device’s touch screen. Biometric data and a PIN allow access to the payment data. If the retailer’s payment system is authenticated by Wocket, the two devices communicate to complete the payment. No internet connection is required.

But perhaps the most interesting feature of the Wocket is its programmable swipe card. At the point of sale, you can choose a payment option from your stored cards and program the included dynamic card to swipe in the retailer’s card reader. It holds only the exact amount of your purchase, and only until the purchase is complete. After that use, it goes back to a simple piece of plastic holding no personal or financial information. Unlike other similar digital payment systems, the Wocket doesn’t need to be paired with a smartphone or any other piece of technology – it’s fully self-contained. At the time of publication the retail price hasn’t yet been announced, but updates will be posted to Wocket’s website.

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Carrying a hundred credit, debit, gift, and membership cards around in your wallet is one of those things that we’ve always hoped would become archaic given enough time. We’ve been waiting many long years, and other than the ability to use PayPal at the point of purchase it looks like we’ll be waiting a while before ALL of our cards can be chucked. Coin is here to push forward the transition into electronic PoP sales, no rubber-banded stack of cards needed.

Coin operates mostly like an electronic credit card. It’s durable, magnet-proof, and water resistant. It is reportedly tough enough to survive life in your wallet, too. The first step in setting up the Coin is to use the included card-swipe dongle to swipe all of your cards with your smartphone. You also take pictures of the cards, allowing the app to store all of the necessary info about each.

When you want to make a purchase, you can select the card to use via a small button on Coin’s front. The button scrolls through all of the stored cards until you spot the one you need. You then swipe the card like any other credit card and the payment is debited from the chosen account. Up to eight cards can be stored on Coin at one time, but the smartphone app can store unlimited cards.

For security purposes, the Coin app will let you know if you walk away without your card – provided you have your smartphone with you. Coin doesn’t need the phone to be present in order to function, but it will de-activate itself after a pre-set amount of time away from your phone. The included battery should keep Coin going for about two years and can be replaced after that. The retail price is $50 for now while the project is in fundraising mode, but is expected to double once the card becomes commercially available.

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The average American adult carries somewhere between 6 and 10 credit and store cards. That’s a lot to keep track of, especially when you’re trying to cram all of them into your wallet and that wallet gets embarrassingly bulky. That fancy-looking card up at the top of this post is called the Protean Echo, and it’s meant to ease the load on your pocket by storing your credit card info and working in combination with your mobile phone. The Echo comes with a special smartphone dongle that lets you scan your credit cards’ magnetic stripes. The associated app can store as many cards as you have, but you have to choose three to “load” onto the physical Echo card at any one time (they can be changed whenever you like).

When you want to pay for a purchase, you push the button on the front of the card representing the card you want to use and then swipe it. The dynamic magnetic stripe gives up your payment info just as if it were the original card. The Echo’s batteries last around two years and the card never needs to be charged. It is easy to imagine some retailers getting all bent out of shape about people trying to use the Echo for payment since it looks rather like a tool a thief would use to make use of stolen credit card info. But it’s a rad idea that we’d like to see gain acceptance among retailers.

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