Will Shrinking Wallets Drive More e-Payments?

By Maria Bruno-Britz, Bank Systems & Technology

Is it just me or are wallets shrinking? I mean literally, not figuratively.

I don't know what the situation is with men's wallets, but I went on a foray recently to purchase a new wallet for myself. I must have tried 10 different wallets and each was just as mis-sized as the other. They were all leather of varying degrees of quality. However, I found the problem plagued wallets across the price spectrum.The wallets first lulled me into a false sense of satisfaction. All my credit cards fit just so (I don't have an overabundance of them), along with a few miscellaneous papers I carry with me. However, when it came time to actually put my cash in the wallet, it was like shoving a size 9 foot into a size 6 shoe! I'm no "moneybags," mind you, and don't walk around with huge wads of cash in my purse, but I like to have just enough handy when I need it. There was no reason why my money should not have fit into the bill slot. I had to fold the bills over themselves twice in order for them to slide into place. Actually, the folded up cash did not exactly "slide" into place. The process was more akin to putting on a pair of jeans that should have stayed a bit longer in the dryer. And apparently I'm not the only one. I spoke with a couple of people I know who recently purchased wallets and they had the same problem.

What is going on here? Are the wallet designers now in cahoots with the banks to make people stop using cash and opt for more electronic forms of payment? Are Charter Club and Fossil purposely making the idea of carrying cash physically inconvenient so Americans opt for cards when we make purchases? Who knows? But you'd think with the money these designers are charging for these things that they'd at least have the decency to measure them so that U.S. bills will fit in the bill folds! I know many of these wallets are made in China, Italy and other countries. So are they measuring the wallet size against the size of the Yuan and Euro rather than the U.S. dollar? Sometimes I wonder.

I did eventually find a decent wallet. But really, should it have been such an ordeal? I hope you men have an easier time when buying wallets for yourselves.