For a growing number of young people, a wallet filled with cash and cards is as unfashionable as millennial socks, no-show socks and skinny jeans. For the cool kids, carrying only a smartphone is the solution. Iykyk – that’s “if you know, you know”, for those who don’t know.

I, Brian Chen, a graying 39-year-old tech columnist, am not among those who know. It is unfathomable for me to part with my wallet, which contains crucial items such as my driver’s license. So in an effort to be hip again, I recruited my 23-year-old colleague Yiwen Lu to ask the young people how they live like this, and then I took the plunge myself.

By ditching my physical wallet, I join the ranks of young people like Ruby Hegab, a 19-year-old college student from Fremont, California. As soon as she got her first credit card last year, she said, she went all-in on using her iPhone to pay for groceries, parking meters and restaurant meals, and on carrying insurance cards.

“If a store doesn’t accept Tap to Pay, I don’t give them business,” Ms. Hegab said. But that rarely happens, because the vast majority of merchants she visits, including major retailers and mom-and-pop stores, now accept some form of mobile payment from services like Apple Pay and Venmo.

In a digital payments survey of just over 2,500 Americans, about 80 percent of Gen Z respondents said they used mobile wallets, and of those, half wanted to use their phones for much more than just paying for things, according to recent data from Pymnts Intelligence, a research firm that studies trade.

Younger people are increasingly using their phones for purposes that older adults would use a traditional wallet for, such as carrying documents such as driver’s licenses, boarding passes and event tickets. Some of these digital items can be added to Apple and Google’s wallet apps, while others, such as insurance cards, can be downloaded through third-party apps.

The change in behavior is a reflection of how far mobile wallets have come. About a decade ago, when I reviewed the emerging mobile payment apps, most people shrugged at the technology because tapping a phone on a scanner was no more convenient than swiping a credit card. In recent years, amid a global pandemic that pushed people to make contactless payments, Apple and Google expanded their software to support digitized driver’s licenses and transit cards, a perfect storm that has made mobile wallets more useful.

I braved it for a week without a wallet and only used my phone to run errands; going to bars, eating out and going to the movies; and even buy crab from a fishing boat. The phone sufficed in almost all of these situations, although paying for dinner was more complicated and using a digital driver’s license to buy wine at a supermarket was a nonstarter.

If you’re hoping to throw away your wallet or just want to reduce some bulk in your pocket, here’s what you need to know.

Payments

Many stores allow Android and iPhone users to use Google Pay and Apple Pay by tapping their phones on readers next to the cash register. Many small businesses, such as food trucks, accept payments through third-party apps such as Venmo, which allow you to scan a barcode to send money.

Still, there is an inherent risk in relying entirely on a mobile wallet. Abi Hoyer, 21, from Punta Gorda, Florida, said she didn’t carry a wallet for security reasons: in the event of a robbery, a thief would only get their hands on her phone. Still, thieves may be able to make payments and withdraw money from your account if they do has forced you to share your passcode.

That is why it is important that iPhone users activate a new security feature in the so-called settings Protection against stolen devices, which prevents access to data such as passwords and stored credit cards when the device is in an unknown location. And Android users should be aware of the steps to lock and clean data of the device in case of theft.

Furthermore, not all companies accept mobile payments. Ms. Hoyer learned this the hard way at Walmart when she discovered she was unable to pay for her items and did not have her full credit card number to sign up for the store’s wallet, Walmart Pay. One solution: Password management apps like 1Password and Bitwarden can securely store sensitive data, including credit card numbers, in case you need to look them up.

Jillian Gillespie, 27, of Chicago, switched to Apple Pay after losing her wallet more than a year ago, she said. This works fine for fast-casual restaurants where you pay at the counter, but at sit-down restaurants where waiters hand over a bill and expect to use a credit card, you may occasionally have to rely on friends to pay. In those cases, she typically uses Venmo to pay her friends back.

“I don’t really carry my wallet with me because it can come and bite me in the butt sometimes,” Ms. Gillespie said.

I encountered similar problems. Of the three restaurants, only one brought a reader that allowed me to tap my phone to pay, while the others asked for a credit card, which my wife had to pay for.

Insurance cards and other documents

Digital scans or photos of important documents such as health and car insurance cards are now widely accepted as a substitute for the real thing. Some insurers, such as State Farm, Aetna and Anthem, make their digital cards available through their apps, which can be added to your mobile wallet. However, not all insurance cards work this way, and it can be difficult to find those cards at a moment’s notice. You don’t want to be stuck searching through photos or finding the right app to load your insurance card after a car accident. , for example.

I found that the easiest method to easily look up insurance cards is to add images of them all to one digital note saved on your phone. On iPhones, open your insurance card photo, tap the button in the bottom left corner and select the Notes app to save the image to a new note. Then rename the note ‘Insurance Cards’.

Likewise, Android users can use the Google Keep note-taking app. In Keep, tap “Add Image” at the bottom. Then choose the photo of your insurance card and label the note.

Other types of cards and documents, like my Clipper transit card, movie tickets, and gift cards, were all easy enough to digitize: Tapping the Add to Apple Wallet button loaded them into my Apple Wallet app.

Identification

Digitized versions of driver’s licenses still exist relatively new and being tested in several states, including California, Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Utah. This is where the mobile wallet falls short.

For example, here in California you sign up for the digital driver’s license via the California Department of Motor Vehicles app. The app generates a temporary barcode that can be scanned to verify your age and identity. Airports in some states are now displaying signs saying they will accept the digital ID of those who have signed up for the Transportation Security Agency’s PreCheck program — but many states have yet to participate in this experimentmaking it impractical to leave your driver’s license at home.

The digital ID is also not yet an acceptable replacement for a physical driver’s license. The California DMV says law enforcement cannot accept the mobile driver’s license if you are pulled over, and Arizona’s Motor Vehicle Division says people should still carry a physical ID.

When purchasing alcohol at several supermarkets last week, cashiers were unfamiliar with the digital California driver’s license and did not have a scanner to check the barcode. And at a cocktail bar, a bouncer refused digital IDs and demanded physical cards.

In the event of an emergency, it may also be difficult for someone to identify you. Apples Medical ID card and Google’s Personal safety Features can be set up to show people your name, age, and emergency contacts by pressing a shortcut on the phone, but medical providers need to know how to use the feature.

So it is best to carry a physical ID with you. To do that without carrying a wallet, you could do what some younger people do: place the ID between your phone and the phone case. I found that to be an imperfect solution because the card brings the phone closer to the edges of the case, making the screen more susceptible to damage if dropped.

After a week, I decided on what I thought was the best solution: a magnetic wallet that attaches to the back of my phone and only holds two cards: my ID and one credit card.

That felt like cheating. But Ms Hegab, the 19-year-old, admits she uses a similar card holder just to carry her driver’s license.

Once digital driver’s licenses work everywhere, she says, she will get rid of them.

Eight months after hundreds of migrants died when they capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, investigators said Wednesday that the European Union’s border agency is unable to prevent future maritime disasters.

The investigation by an EU watchdog office into the border agency Frontex was prompted by the deaths of more than 600 men, women and children who drowned off the coast of Greece last June in front of dozens of officials and coastguard crews.

“Frontex has ‘coastguard’ in its name, but its current mandate and mission clearly falls short of that,” Emily O’Reilly, head of the EU watchdog agency, said on Wednesday. “If Frontex has a duty to help save lives at sea but lacks the tools to do so, then this is clearly a matter for EU lawmakers.”

Following the capsizing of the Adriana, a severely overcrowded fishing vessel, both Frontex and the Greek coast guard came under fire for failing to assist passengers on the ship, which slowly sank for hours as terrified migrants on board cried for help.

The scale of the loss – it was the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean in years – prompted several investigations, including that of the European Ombudsman’s office, which published its report on Wednesday.

In the report, researchers say that with member states’ failure to act to protect migrants, more legislative power is needed to carry out search and rescue missions at EU level.

Under the current system, Frontex must work closely with local maritime authorities and obtain permission before acting. The report also recommended that Frontex reconsider its presence in countries where chronic violations of migrants’ rights have been recorded.

The researchers also said that the agency has no internal rules for responding to shipwrecks, and that there was insufficient clarity on the division of labor between the agency and national authorities.

Frontex has a delicate mission. Its role is not only to help monitor the European Union’s external borders, but also to protect the rights of migrants attempting to cross them.

The agency deploys guards from all over Europe and supplies helicopters, boats, drones and other equipment to border countries such as Greece. But the country has also been accused of covering up and even participating in human rights violations.

Its former executive director, Fabrice Leggeri, resigned in 2022 amid allegations of harassment, mismanagement and rights abuses, and the agency promised reforms under new leadership. But investigators said on Wednesday that newly appointed human rights monitors were not sufficiently involved in Frontex’s decision-making process.

Europe has significantly tightened its migration policies after the arrival of more than a million refugees, mainly from Syria, between 2015 and 2016, fueling support for far-right political parties.

The last EU-funded search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean ended in 2014. Critics argued that proactively rescuing migrant ships at sea creates an incentive for migrants to take dangerous routes to reach Europe, and also encourages smugglers to take risks. the lives of their passengers.

The task has since fallen to charities, which have been prosecuted in several EU countries, including Greece and Italy, for their sea rescue activities.

The Greek coast guard has said smugglers on the Adriana refused help and panic on board caused the boat to capsize. Several survivors have said the ship sank when the coast guard tried to tow it, a claim Greek authorities have denied. Ultimately, a Greek Coast Guard ship, with the help of a superyacht in the area, rescued about 100 people.

As the Adriana was sinking, Frontex made four separate offers to help Greek authorities through aerial surveillance, the EU watchdog said on Wednesday, but received no response and could not go to the ship’s location without Greece’s permission.

The investigation found that Frontex had been to the scene only twice: once by plane, two hours after Italian authorities first issued a warning about the Adriana, and then by drone after the boat had already sunk.

Greek officials have consistently denied accusations of violating migrants’ rights, saying their migration policy is “tough but fair.”

Ms O’Reilly called on the EU institutions to learn lessons from the shipwreck.

“The European Union projects its identity through the prism of its commitment to the rule of law and to fundamental rights,” she said. “In the aftermath of the Adriana tragedy, she must take the opportunity to strengthen that identity through reflection and through actions that would, as far as possible, prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Hasbro, the toy maker behind popular brands such as Peppa Pig, Transformers and Magic: The Gathering, said Monday it would cut about 1,110 jobs, or nearly 17 percent of its workforce, as the company continued to struggle with weak sales.

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said in a memo to staff Monday that “the market headwinds we expected have proven stronger and more persistent than planned.”

The layoffs, announced during the crucial holiday shopping season, follow a reduction of 800 jobs at the company earlier this year; The toymaker said it expected the majority of the latest cuts to take place over the next six months, with the remainder over the next year.

“We expected the first three quarters to be challenging, especially in toys, where the market is coming off historic pandemic-driven highs,” Mr. Cocks said in the memo. “While we have made significant progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw in the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.”

In his third quarter income In the report, the company had indicated that soft toy sales would dampen its prospects, noting that overall sales were expected to decline by about 13 to 15 percent this year.

Shares of the Pawtucket, RI-based company fell about 5.7 percent in after-hours trading. The stock, which closed Monday at $48.89, is down nearly 19 percent in the past year.

Mr. Cocks also said the company would continue to explore its options to “reduce its real estate footprint” and close its Providence, RI, office after its lease expires in January 2025.

Haunted by its responsibility for World War II and the tyranny of the Nazis, Germany embraced the pursuit of peace with the fervor of a convert. But on Wednesday, the government took a major step toward shedding that legacy as war once again transforms the European continent.

For the first time since the end of the world war, the government has unveiled a comprehensive document national security strategy intended to address Germany’s vulnerability to new military, economic and geopolitical threats, including climate change.

With the war in Ukraine in its 16th month, Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the security plan as “a big, big change in the way we handle security issues.” The goal, he said, is to combine foreign, domestic and economic priorities and increase spending on the military.

But the document may not be all the chancellor had in mind when he took office in December 2021 with a pledge to rethink the national security strategy. Mr Scholz’s tri-party coalition has been hampered by increasing public bickering that both delayed the new plan and left it vulnerable to criticism that it was too watered down.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which came months after the German government came to power, has only reinforced the sense of urgency that it can no longer cling to the self-imposed taboo on military power it has had for three-quarters of a century.

While the document received relatively positive reviews from analysts as an explanation of how far Germany has come in changing its strategic culture since the invasion, they questioned whether the ministries of a rival coalition government will follow through on the document’s ambitions or money will stick behind.

A pledge made in February by Mr Scholz – to meet the NATO spending target of 2% of GDP next year and maintain that spending – has been capped, with a pledge to meet that target as an average over a multi-year period.

At the same time, the coalition rejected a request from Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to increase its own budget by 10 billion euros (about $10.8 billion) to get a decent start on rebuilding the German military. Instead, he promised his budget will not be cut — meaning it will be eroded by inflation.

China has been such a contentious issue that the coalition has shelved it, and it will be addressed in a separate paper due next month.

And after fierce arguments about the establishment of a German National Security Council, the parties abandoned the idea.

“It’s hard to be ambitious with so many chefs,” says Ulrich Speck, a German analyst. The vagueness in the document about how Germany plans to deliver on its ambitions is deliberate, he suggested, a way for Mr Scholz, a Social Democrat, to keep the chancellery free to act on the big questions of foreign policy and not to be relinquished to the Foreign Office and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green.

In general, the strategy focuses on three pillars of German security. First, there is an active, “robust” defense, including a new strategic culture, high military spending commitments, including meeting the NATO spending target, at least as part of the multi-annual average, and a concentration on deterrence, not disarmament.

Second is resilience: the ability of Germany and its allies to protect their values, reduce economic dependence on rivals, deter and defeat cyber-attacks, and defend the United Nations Charter and the rule of law.

Third is sustainability, a pillar that includes things like climate change and the energy and food crisis.

“Calling it a status quo document sounds unfair, but it does try to take stock of where we are now, and it is already an achievement to say how far Germany has come,” said Claudia Major, head of the International Security Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Strategies should be progressive and link resources and goals, she said. “But to some extent this strategy is incapable of doing that because it is not linked to clear budgetary implications,” she said. “Ambitions are nice to have, but without the resources they are hard to judge.”

Christian Lindner, the country’s finance minister and head of the Free Democrats, acknowledged on Wednesday that any new commitments proposed in the strategy — particularly the 2 percent defense spending — would require new funding, but he could not provide forecasts on costs.

Germany has always considered its national interests safe within the NATO alliance, the European Union and its relationship with Washington. So it has never before felt the need to map out its own security strategy.

But that changed with the complicated US presidency of Donald J. Trump, who spoke at various times about leaving NATO and accused Germany of being a free rider and not spending enough on its own defense.

The drafting of a strategy was an important part of the agreement between Mr Scholz’s social democrats and their two coalition partners, the Greens and the Free Democrats. But the Russian invasion in February 2022, just a few months after the coalition took office, generated new urgency, attention and controversy.

Norbert Röttgen, an opposition legislator from the Christian Democratic Union and a foreign policy expert, was sharply critical of the document, which he called “the lowest common denominator” of a divided coalition government, “a description of the undisputed part of the status quo’ and ‘essentially without strategy’.

There are no answers to important questions, he said. He noted the postponement of a China strategy until next month because it has been so controversial, while the current paper simply echoes the European language received about China and never mentions the word Taiwan.

“What is the German idea of ​​a European security order after the war?” he asked. “What about NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova? Not a word,” he said. One of the main challenges for Germany is “the reduction of our trade and investment in China and vice versa, which requires an economic growth strategy to compensate,” he said.

But the links between foreign and economic and technology policy are also left out, he said.

Daniela Schwarzer, foreign policy analyst and member of the board of directors of the Bertelsmann Foundation, said the strategy paper was an important “next step” for Germany. Although it is disappointing for many, “it is as ambitious as it gets for this coalition,” she said.

It’s thinnest to pay for new targets with a static budget, she said, but it shows that “Germany is more serious about defending itself, even if it hopes not to spend more, which of course won’t work.”

But it also includes major cybersecurity goals, sharpens language somewhat about China’s nature as a troubling partner when needed, and “is a call to action” for government ministries and industry.

For Anna Sauerbrey, Die Zeit’s foreign editor, the newspaper was “slightly disappointing” but tried to “provide a holistic view of security that combines foreign and domestic issues, but which must be filled in by tangible policies.”

She noted a new commitment to EU enlargement for Ukraine and Moldova, beyond the Western Balkans, but said the main weakness was “no commitment to increase budget spending”.

Mr Speck, the analyst, said the document broadly described the issues, “but what is particularly lacking are clearly defined goals and priorities to decide where resources should be deployed.” It helps different parts of the government to jointly gain insight into the major goals.

But ultimately, he said, “it is too weak to really make a difference in foreign policy and won’t be very consistent in setting a future course,” which will be decided in the chancery.

The World Bank on Tuesday said the global economy is in a “precarious state” and warned of sluggish growth this year and next as rising interest rates slow consumer spending and business investment and threaten the stability of the financial system.

The bank’s lukewarm forecasts in its latest Global Economic Prospects report highlight the predicament facing global policymakers as they try to contain stubborn inflation by raising interest rates as they grapple with the aftermath of the pandemic and the ongoing disruptions of the supply chain as a result of the war in Ukraine.

The World Bank predicted global growth would slow this year from 3.1 percent in 2022 to 2.1 percent. That is slightly stronger than the 1.7 percent forecast in January, but output is expected to rise to 2.4 percent in 2024, weaker than the bank’s forecast. earlier forecast of 2.7 percent.

“Sunbeams in the global economy that we saw earlier this year are fading and gray days are likely ahead,” said Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist at the World Bank Group.

Mr Kose said the global economy was experiencing a “sharp, synchronized global slowdown” and that 65 percent of countries would see slower growth this year than last year. A decade of bad fiscal management in low-income countries that depended on borrowed money is exacerbating the problem. According to the World Bank, 14 of the 28 low-income countries are in debt or at high risk of debt.

Optimism about an economic recovery this year has been dampened by recent stress in the banking sectors in the United States and Europe, which resulted in the largest bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis. Concerns about the health of the banking system have led many lenders to withdrawing from lending to businesses and individuals, a phenomenon the World Bank said was likely to further depress growth.

The bank also warned that rising borrowing costs in rich countries — including the United States, where overnight interest rates rose above 5 percent for the first time in 15 years — were an additional headwind for the world’s poorest economies.

The most vulnerable economies, the report warned, are at greater risk of financial crises due to rising interest rates. Higher interest rates make it more expensive for developing countries to pay off their loans and, if their currency depreciates, to import food.

In addition to the risks of rising interest rates, the pandemic and conflict in Ukraine have combined to undo decades of progress in global poverty reduction. The World Bank estimated on Tuesday that incomes in the poorest countries would be 6 percent lower in 2024 than in 2019.

“Emerging markets and developing economies are struggling to cope today – bereft of the resources to create jobs and deliver essential services to their most vulnerable citizens,” the report said.

The World Bank is also seeing widespread slowdowns in advanced economies. In the United States, it expects a growth of 1.1 percent this year and a growth of 0.8 percent in 2024.

China is a notable exception to that trend, and the reopening of its economy after years of strict Covid-19 lockdowns is supporting global growth. The bank expects the Chinese economy to grow by 5.6 percent this year and 4.6 percent next year.

Inflation is expected to continue to moderate this year, but the World Bank expects prices to remain above central bank targets in many countries in 2024.