I'm starting to come the the same conclusion, but not for practical reasons. My thinking is about privacy. If I buy some chocolates from retailer X (with or without their loyalty system), these parties will know what I purchased and where: The retailer, the bank, the merchant (visa/mc), wallet provider (Google/Apple/Samsung). Any upstream 3rd parties for analytics, big data warehouses, ai companies (fraud detection, spending predictions), marketing companies, research companies, manufacturers. Then there are bluetooth beacons, microphones, cameras, facial recognition, keyboard/screen capture (Gboard, Samsung Keyboard, Whatsapp texts). Then there is sms and popup notification on device that gets ingested by x amount of systems too. So the whole pipe just exists to gather as much as possible data to sell me more stuff. Having a card will take some of them out of the loop or less rich metadata than using a digital wallet.

It is? I haven’t carried my wallet around in years, because Apple Wallet does everything I need. Concert tickets, boarding passes, bank cards, public transport cards, etc. A physical wallet and cards in comparison feels like stone age technology.

No it’s not, all of my and my extended family cards (for… like a decade!) are never even leave the envelope they come in. I’m not sure I personally know people who use physical cards over Google or Apple Pay. I have seen the cards being used in the wild, of course. But I’m having hard time remembering anyone I personally know who does that.