A smart MagSafe wallet could alert you if you forget a card after using it in a store, thanks to a simple approach outlined in a new Apple patent application.
The wallet could also better protect you against accidental loss of cards when you only carry one or two cards…
In the UK, contactless payment is so ubiquitous that I make almost all my card payments using Apple Pay on my watch. But I still carry a couple of physical cards in a MagSafe wallet for the rare occasions when contactless payment isn’t available, or when I make a purchase over the £100 ($124) limit with terminals that don’t support the limits. highest Apple Pay.
One risk of using physical cards is forgetting to put them back in the wallet after use, while another is that the card falls out without us realizing it, a particular danger when carrying a single card in a slot designed for three. A new Apple patent application discovered by Patently Apple aims to avoid both.
Apple describes including a spring-loaded clip, with a mousetrap-like design, intended to keep cards securely in the wallet.
The internal view shows a spring clip, which can be used to exert force against physical cards that are inserted into the smart wallet. Under this approach, the spring clip can help prevent physical cards from simply falling out of the smart wallet in common scenarios, for example, when only one card is stored in the smart wallet when the smart wallet is placed face down. , etc.
The addition of a tension meter would allow the wallet to determine the number of cards in the wallet. If a card is removed and not replaced shortly after (as would be expected when it is briefly removed for a transaction), the wallet will notify you.
Apple uses five minutes as a suggested time before a missing card alert is triggered.
(This) involves the iPhone determining that a time threshold has passed and the physical card is still missing from the smart wallet. Coming to this conclusion first involves the iPhone performing an update to its event log in response to receiving a periodic update from the smart wallet about the physical cards stored in it.
In turn, the iPhone identifies, based on information stored in the wireless device’s event log, that the physical card has been missing from the smart wallet since at least 8:02 a.m. The iPhone then compares the current time with the last time. time the smart wallet detected the physical card to determine if the time threshold (for example, five minutes) has passed. In the illustrated example, the current time is 8:08 am, which means that (1) approximately six minutes have passed since the physical card 122-1 was last detected and (2) the time threshold has passed. .
If you have already left the location where the card was picked up, your iPhone will give you instructions to return to the location.
It goes on to describe more sophisticated options. For example, if a card still isn’t replaced in your wallet sometime after your phone alerts you, you could proactively offer to contact the card issuer to freeze or cancel it.
As always with Apple patents, there’s no way to know which of them will ever become actual products, but as long as we need to carry physical rectangles with us as a backup for Apple Pay, this seems like a solid idea.
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