The Wocket Smart Wallet Review

The first thing to note, if you’ve come here looking to purchase the Wocket Wallet is, unfortunately, the wallet is no longer available on the market as has been defunct. The Wocket Wallet itself was an innovative smart wallet that used biometrics to secure your identity and replace all your credit/debit cards. What makes the Wocket different was it did things differently from other competitors where you didn’t need to connect the wallet to your smartphone, doing it all within a self-contained unit. 

Although the Wocket Wallet is no longer available I’m going to delve into the history of the wallet, its successes, failures, and what led the wallet to eventually become discontinued by its company NXT-ID. We’ll also look into alternatives to the Wocket Smart Wallet and discuss the options still on the market that a similar to what this innovative technically advanced wallet provided. Let’s get started. 

Functionality & Features

The Wocket Wallet was build to help join the minimalist wallet movement and streamline your everyday carry, allowing you to carry less with you on a daily basis. Its design resembled a PDF style device (remember those), with a small touch screen that has a black and white screen that resembles the type you find on Kindle or other eBook devices. 

The Wocket Wallet allowed you to store a near unlimited amount of credit/debit cards on it. By simply, interesting the desired card in the device and inputting a few details, the card details would be saved, which allowed you to then use the included Wocket Card in place for any of the stored credit cards. This allows you to carry only one card instead of the usual 4 – 5 maximizing space and allowing for easier use when it comes to paying.

The price of the Wocket Wallet is worth mentioning. Coming in at a price tag of $229.00 (it was reduced to $179.00 at a certain point), the Wocket Wallet was by no way cheap. But considering the technology is used, and what it was capable of, it was a lucrative and good purchase for many. 

The Negatives & Issues

Although the Wocket Wallet was quite an innovation, and ahead of its time, the wallet itself did come with a few issues that many reviewers pick up upon at the time. First of all, and probably the main issue for me, was the lack of support for Chip and Pin. In America, it’s not uncommon to still use the old swipe or sign methods for payment, but across the rest of the world, this method for payment is seen as old technology, and even Chip & Pin has become outdated with the increased use of contactless payment methods. 

Secondly, the device itself wasn’t small in size. Its larger size made it quite uncomfortable to store in your pocket and its bulky size wasn’t pleasant to hold or use. This brings me onto its overall look and design. The device itself, in my opinion, was quite ugly and resembled the likes of PDA’s you’d find in the 90s. Combined with its plastic exterior gives it a feeling of poor quality something that I wouldn’t expect or want from a device at this price tag (with its expensive price tag being an issue in and of itself). 

Finally, some users reported issues with the touch screen being unresponsive, along with it slowing down considerably over time and with extended daily use. The menu layout wasn’t intuitive, and the device could be quite temperamental when trying to pay with many users reporting it wouldn’t work. Not only that, but if you wanted to carry other typical wallet items, such as physical banknotes, or coins, then you’d need to carry another wallet with you anyways completing omitting the purpose of the wallet in the first place. 

The Fate of the Wocket Wallet

As far as the website was concerned the company behind the Wocket Wallet make no attempts to improve upon the technology that was, near the end of its life, was outdated. We live in an ever-expanding and rapidly technologically advanced world. You only need to look at smartphone technology back in 2015 to see how far we’ve come, and as the Wocket Wallet makes zero attempts at improving the Wocket Wallet to continually innovate and improve upon the issues raised in this article. Because of this, the Wocket Wallet was simply outdated and no longer served the needs of the user in any meaningful way. 

Combined with the fact that Wocket never expanding the wallets technology to include Chip & Pin compatibility, the preferred method for payment in the majority of the world, and the Wocket’s fate was sealed. Overall, for its time, the Wocket was a highly innovative wallet and one that was clever in both technology and design. Many wallets similar to the Wocket have come and gone (mainly cropping up on Kickstarter), and never even make it to production simply staying as a pipe dream. I commend the Wocket Wallet for actually developing and having a good 5 years of production on the market. 

I guarantee that one of the main reasons Wocket didn’t continually update and improve upon their wallet (creating a version 2 or whatever) was simply because it wasn’t profitable. Smart wallets such as these require a lot more capital and development than the average wallet, while also being niche in nature that doesn’t have a broad appeal to most people looking for a new wallet. Perhaps one day, we’ll get a wallet similar to the Wocket but I wouldn’t count on it. 

Alternatives to the Wocket Wallet

The Wocket Wallet isn’t the only brand that has attempted over the years to create a biometric wallet that tries to consolidate your daily carry using technology. Over the last decade, many brands have entered the fray, tried and failed with more often or not eventually doomed in a similar fashion to the Wocket. One example of this, and a wallet I’ve talked about in the past, was the Spend Wallet. Their biggest competitors at the time, the Stratos Card and Coin Smart Card have followed suit and are also smart wallets/card companies that shut down due and no longer sell their products.

So what alternatives to the Wocket Wallet currently exist on the market? Unfortunately, it really is slim pickings for what the Wocket Wallet offered. The next best thing is probably more similar to the likes of the Stratos Card which aimed at removing a device altogether and allows your multiple credit/debit cards to be stored all on one card utilizing an iPhone or Android app. The best example of this currently on the market is the Curve Card. This is a self-proclaimed ‘all in one credit card’ where you only need to carry one card with you that stores all other cards you own. It works well, and with a 4.4-star rating on the Play Store others tend to agree.