Wallet Retrospective #2 The World's only Cylinder Wallet
A Wallet Like No Other: The Rise and Fall of a Cylindrical Cash Carrier.
Back in 2016 a single man set out to try something completly new in the wallet world. Storing banknotes in a convienent way is something many have tried to crack it with mixed success. In comes a crowdfunding campaign that wasn't trying to become the next secrid or Ridge Wallet but was trying to create convienance to those who were all in on banknotes and bills and wanted a unique, stripped back and minimalist wallet to carry cash and cash alone. In our second wallet retrpsoective we take a look at the failed Bank Roll Wallet - Dubbed the The world's first cylinder wallet.
Bold, fresh, and tubular. That’s how the creators themselves summed up what might just be the world’s only attempt at a cylindrical wallet. Whether or not it qualifies as a “wallet” is up for debate, after all, it’s built to hold cash, not cards, which pushes it into a bit of a grey area. For many (myself included), a wallet without card slots is really just a fancy cash container. Still, definitions aside, the Bank Roll, a name as clever as it is fitting, is a fascinating little concept.
The mind behind it is Sven Oakeson, a name you’re unlikely to stumble across outside of crowdfunding platforms. From what I’ve been able to dig up, Sven has launched three campaigns on Indiegogo, and it’s through these pages that we get a glimpse of the man and his ideas. There’s not much else out there about him, but perhaps that mystery adds to the charm. One thing’s for sure - creating a cylindrical wallet takes a unique kind of thinking, and Sven clearly has that in spades.
Sven’s first attempt at crowdfunding was The Solo, a self-playing guitar that sadly never met its funding goal. His second campaign was the Bank Roll, the curious cylinder wallet we’re looking at today. His third and final project was The Gravity Charger, a wall plug designed to solve the all-too-common problem of frayed charging cables by rerouting the cord connection to the bottom. Once again, the campaign went unfunded.
From the outside looking in, Sven seems like a classic tinkerer - someone bursting with ideas, always chasing the next quirky invention. A designer at heart, and maybe even an inventor by spirit, he clearly enjoyed dreaming up creative solutions to everyday problems. But despite the originality of his concepts, success never quite found him. The Bank Roll came and went by mid-2016, and his last campaign wrapped up in December of that same year. After that, Sven disappeared from the crowdfunding world, never launching another project under the same name again.
So what exactly was the cylinder-shaped Bank Roll wallet, and why does it deserve a place on this list? The answer lies in its design, something I’ve genuinely never seen before. And I’ll be honest, I think it’s kind of ingenious.
As the name suggests, the Bank Roll is shaped like a miniature cylinder. A slim slot runs down one side, where your banknotes can be slid in. Once inside, a rotating top mechanism allows the notes to be coiled up inside the cylinder, securely stowed in a compact and surprisingly fun way. It’s a novel idea that’s equal parts functional and playful, something that feels more like a magician’s prop than a traditional wallet. And maybe that’s what makes it so memorable.
So, why did it fail? Honestly, I don’t think the downfall of the Bank Roll had much to do with the product itself. In fact, it was a clever idea - distinctive, memorable, and genuinely something I could see turning heads. The problem was the campaign.
The Indiegogo page lacked just about everything you’d expect from a successful crowdfunding pitch: no decent video, no images showing the product in use, and no meaningful information about materials, dimensions, or how the mechanism actually worked. It was vague, underdeveloped, and left too much to the imagination. And that’s where so many campaigns fall short. A great idea isn’t enough. Good marketing and a compelling story are often 90% of the battle. You need to sell the vision, and the Bank Roll didn’t.
From a design standpoint, I genuinely have very little to criticise. The execution of the idea seemed smart, and the core concept, compressing your banknotes into a tiny cylindrical vault, is weirdly satisfying. But presentation is everything in crowdfunding, and on that front, the Bank Roll simply dropped the ball.
In the end, it raised just £407 from 11 backers, nowhere close to its nearly £15,000 target. A shame, really. Because in a sea of wallets that all start to blend together, this one stood out.
But what do you think? Was the Bank Roll doomed from the start, or was it a good idea caught in a bad pitch? Let us know your thoughts.