GIVE your wallet a loving second glance today. Chances are, you won’t be carrying it with you for much longer.

Smartphones are becoming so smart, they’re replacing lots of other things that used to have a home in our pockets and handbags.

Goodbye camera, address book, games device, music player and diary.

Your phone does all of that. All that remains is a wallet, and that’s not for much longer.

Google has launched Wallet (www.google.com/wallet), the first in what will very quickly be a bewildering mishmash of digital wallet services, all of them tied to your phone.

Right now, Google’s service is only open in the US, and even there only to customers of certain banks.

But UK alternatives are not far off. Even if Google doesn’t launch something similar here, the phone companies will.

They’ve already dabbled in letting people pay by text message, but the next step forward is simple: putting an extra chip into phones.

If you’ve used an Oyster card to get around on London’s Tube, you’re already familiar with the technology. Digital wallets will use the same kind of chip found in an Oyster.

To buy something, you’ll unlock your wallet (probably with a PIN or a gesture) then tap it on a special payment device, or just wave it nearby.

And if you think there aren’t many of those payment devices around at the moment, you’re right.

On the other hand, it didn’t take long to fill the entire London Underground with them. It won’t take long for them to invade our shops either.

Giles Turnbull

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(Giles Turnbull has a website at gilest.org)