Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to a next generation iPhone wallet that will come with a built-in speaker and alert system. If one of the user’s cards have not been returned to the wallet in a timely manner, the wallet and iPhone go into a series actions to notify the user with location information and more.

In Apple’s patent background they note that physical wallets that are attachable to and removable from wireless devices have been growing in popularity. In some cases, the physical wallets include arrays of magnets that are shaped to match magnetic arrays included in the wireless devices. Under this approach, the magnetic wallets provide a considerable level of convenience in that users can quickly access their most-used physical cards (e.g., a driver's license and two credit cards) simply by reaching for their wireless devices and detaching their magnetic wallets. Users are also more likely to notice that their magnetic wallets are missing given the frequency by which they typically reach for their wireless devices.

Despite the foregoing advantages, these magnetic wallets continue to suffer from drawbacks that have yet to be addressed. For example, a user may fail to reattach their magnetic wallet to their wireless device and ultimately forget where it was placed. 

In another example, a user may remove a physical card from their magnetic wallet and forget to return the physical card to their magnetic wallet after the physical card is used. This scenario arises all too often when a given user accidentally leaves their credit card sitting in a check tray at a restaurant, in an ATM machine after they have withdrawn cash, and the like. 

Additionally, the foregoing issues are typically exacerbated when traditional wallets are used, given their infrequent access (relative to the aforementioned magnetic wallets) delays the discovery of missing physical cards.

Accordingly, there exists a need for a technique for managing (e.g., tracking or detecting the presence or absence of) physical cards that are placed into physical wallets.

Next-Gen Wallet with MagSafe: Techniques for Managing Physical Cards Stored in a Physical Wallet

Apple’s granted patent describes techniques for managing physical cards (e.g., identification or credit cards) stored in a wallet using smart wallet and smart card technologies.

• Smart Wallet-Based Management: A smart wallet detects changes in stored physical cards, gathers relevant data via communication components, logs events with timestamps, and transmits this information to a wireless device before deleting logs.
• Wireless Device Integration: A wireless device receives log events from the smart wallet, supplements the data with location information, and stores it for future reference.
• Smart Card for Traditional Wallets: A smart card inserted into a traditional wallet detects trigger conditions, gathers card information, logs events, transmits data to a wireless device, and deletes logs after transmission.
• Additional Features: The application also includes computing devices and non-transitory storage mediums capable of executing these tracking methods.

In Apple’s patent FIG. 1B below we see a next-gen smart wallet #102 that could include a power supply to supply to various components of the smart wallet. The smart wallet can utilize the speakers #114 to output an alert when one or more of the physical cards #122 are removed from the smart wallet for a threshold period of time. the smart wallet could also utilize the speakers to output informative information, such as reports of refunds that have been processed on any of the physical cards stored in the smart wallet, current balances on any of the physical cards stored in the smart wallet, and so on.

Apple’s patent FIG. 2E above illustrates step #212 that involves the wireless device (#130 iPhone) determining that a threshold amount of time has lapsed and that physical card is still missing from the smart wallet. Reaching this conclusion first involves the wireless device performing an update to the iPhone’s event log in response to receiving a periodic update from the smart wallet about the physical cards stored therein. In turn, the iPhone identifies that the physical card has been missing from the smart wallet since at least 8:02 AM. Subsequently, the iPhone compares the current time to the last time the physical card was detected by the smart wallet in order to determine whether the threshold amount of time (e.g., five minutes) has lapsed. In the example illustrated in FIG. 2E, the current time is 8:08 AM, which means that (1) approximately six minutes has passed since the physical card 122-1 was last detected, and (2) the threshold amount of time has lapsed.

Accordingly, the iPhone could be configured to display a user interface that provides information about the circumstances of detecting that the physical card is missing from the smart wallet (e.g., a name of the physical card 122-1, a time, a location, etc.). Additionally, and as shown in FIG. 2E, the iPhone could present useful options to the user for selection.

For example, the iPhone could identify one or more phone numbers associated with the last known location of the physical card and present an option to call the one or more phone numbers with a single tap.

In another example, the iPhone could enable the user to suspend (or, alternatively, cancel) the physical card to prevent any potential fraud from transpiring. This could involve, for example, connecting the user with the provider of the physical card so that the appropriate measures could be taken.

Two of Apple’s Inventors

• Amrith Ram: Platform Architect
• Jack Erdozain: Platform Architecture Engineer