Apple Pay is convenient and brings out the worst in me

A few days ago, I misplaced my wallet. I remember having it on Sunday, the night of my friend’s birthday dinner, because I was the one to put my card down. Maybe I had it on Monday. I didn’t spend any money then aside from a Lyft ride home, which famously doesn’t require you to swipe a card, so there’s no way to know for sure. And even when I did spend money — a case of La Croix at the bodega, an iced latte as a reward for going to the laundromat — my wallet never factored into the equation. I use Apple Pay for almost every purchase, both because it’s easy and convenient and because, unlike my wallet, my phone is something I actually can’t live without.

It wasn’t until Wednesday that my lack of a wallet became an issue. I didn’t need it to take the subway to a meeting, nor did I need it to get a coffee at said meeting. I didn’t need it to take the train downtown to The Verge’s office — it turns out I needed my ID to get into the building, but we found a way around that. (I showed the receptionist a photo of my driver’s license on my phone.) My wallet-free existence could have been a problem again that night: as I biked to the bar to meet my friends, I wondered if I’d be turned away at the door or when ordering a drink. I was not. The next day, at a wine bar, I used my phone to pay for my share of the bottle I split with a friend.

Wallet or no wallet, I can still get around. Crucially, I can still spend money. It’s a completely seamless process — one that has enabled me to be more forgetful and more careless about my spending.

Apple rolled out its contactless payment system in 2014, promising to disrupt the “fairly antiquated payment process” of swiping a card. “The whole process is based on this little piece of plastic, whether it’s a credit or debit card,” CEO Tim Cook said at the time. “We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers, and the outdated and vulnerable magnetic interface — which by the way is five decades old — and the security codes which all of us know aren’t so secure.”

I kept relying on the exposed numbers and outdated interface for years, mostly out of stubbornness. I was 20 years old and terrible with the little money I had when Apple Pay first launched. If anything, I needed my purchases to have more friction, not less. Every penny I spent was precious. I’d write down all my expenses in a little notebook, color-coding them for good measure. By forcing myself to think about where my money was going, I shamed myself into spending less of it.

Even then, I was losing my wallet all the time. There was a two-month stretch the following summer where I left it on the subway, had it returned to me by a kind stranger who tracked me down on Facebook, and then left it at Yankee Stadium, where I never saw it again. But losing my wallet used to have consequences, and the threat of those consequences — losing my MetroCard, not being able to buy myself lunch, not being able to go out with my friends — made me somewhat more careful.

I finally caved in April 2020, though not entirely by choice. You know what was happening then — I don’t need to remind you. But let me set the scene: I had walked 20 minutes to the good grocery store, waited another 30 minutes in line to be let in (it was a different time!), grabbed a week’s worth of food, and got to the front of the checkout line, where I realized… I didn’t have my wallet. I called my roommate, who dutifully read my credit card number to me while I typed it into Apple Pay. Unfortunately, I never looked back.

It’s not Apple’s fault that I lose my wallet all the time, but Apple does bear some responsibility for ushering in this new world where all you need is your phone. In some ways, I’m the kind of model Apple consumer: no wallet, no ID, just Apple Pay and vibes.

And now here I am, more forgetful than ever, aided and abetted by a world where contactless payments have become the norm. I ended up finding my wallet this morning at the bottom of a tote bag. My credit card, however, is still missing, but it doesn’t really even matter.