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Tuesday, November 5, 2013
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Pros
Simple app for backing up information from cards in your wallet. Quick setup. Free.
- Cons PIN only protects cards, not app. No categorizing options for loyalty cards, membership cards, or anything other than credit and debit. Too many of the features aren't apparent.
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Bottom Line
Lemon Wallet offers a decent way to backup information stowed away in your wallet, but it's not a bona fide virtual wallet system, nor is it secure enough to be one anyway.
If my wallet went missing, I don't know if I'd be able to account for every card that's in it, much less find all the phone numbers to cancel accounts or order replacement cards. (To tell the truth, I actually keep two pouches: one for cash and primary credit cards, and I can quickly tell you exactly what's inside, and a second one for frequent flyer cards, loyalty punch cards, my library card, and other miscellaneous stuff that I may not be able to name off the top of my head, but they are low-stakes cards and it wouldn't hurt terribly if they went missing. Then again, I'm hyper organized.) Nevertheless, the point is most people don't back up the information in their wallets. The Lemon Wallet iPhone app (free) does just that. Lemon Wallet stores pictures of everything in your wallet, including receipts you might need for expense reports.
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But in the virtual wallet game, Lemon doesn't cut the mustard, falling well short of other apps that cover the same ground, Adaptu Wallet (free, 4 stars) being the best example. Adaptu can house a backup of your wallet information, but it is also a personal finance app with budgeting tools and connections to bank accounts, too. Adaptu Wallet has a whole feature dedicated to letting you upload images of credit cards, licenses, business cards, and other odds and ends from your wallet, but the app does so much more than that. Lemon Wallet doesn't do much else.
In other words, Lemon Wallet falls very short of being a virtual wallet. One of my personal favorite personal wallet apps, Google Wallet (free, 4 stars, for Android only) supports payments right through the phone handset via NFC chip, but Google's solution is admittedly rudimentary. It needs more time and development work to mature fully, but at least it strives to really achieve "virtual wallet" status. In light of Google Wallet, Lemon Wallet tastes pretty sour.
Early adopters who aren't on one of the five supported Android phones or one tablet that support Google Wallet can instead try LevelUp or Pay With Square, because both are freely available on iPhone and Android devices.
Features, Both Buried and Obvious
Setting up Lemon Wallet is straightforward: download it from the App Store and create an account. You'll enter an email address for your account and set a four-digit PIN.
The app asks you to start snapping pictures of your cards (a simple camera function) before it allows you to explore anything else in the app, which creates a problem. As you finish uploading your first card, Lemon dumps you onto the virtual wallet screen so you can see it—without showing you how to rename the card or adjust other settings. Most of the settings are so buried that you could easily overlook them now and forever more. None show up on the home screen or under the Settings button. You have to move through at least two screens to find them.
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Additionally, should you find the settings and features to make adjustments to your uploaded cards, the classifications you can add are credit, debit, and other, a measly selection if you ask me. Why not add some of the other common card types, like frequent flyer, membership, loyalty, identification, insurance, business cards, and so on?
If you do go hunting for features, you'll find more than just ways to organize your cards. Lemon Wallet contains a system for uploading receipts to help you with expense reports, and the app can import from and export to Expensify, Evernote, and Box.
Lemon did impress me at one point with some nifty automation. When I scanned a museum membership card, which has an image from Van Gogh's Starry Night on the front and no text whatsoever, Lemon Wallet named the card "Starry Night," which was technically wrong (I changed the name later) but I was still impressed that it could identify the artwork. I wouldn't be surprised if Starry Night were a common image theme people choose for their credit cards.
When I shut down Lemon Wallet and later opened it again, I was shocked it didn't ask me to enter my PIN! Inside the app, I tapped on the preview of one of my cards to open the full image of it, which is when Lemon decided I needed to prove myself. For me, this isn't tight enough security. Any app that uses a PIN should require it before it lets you in. Period.
Skip the Lemons
Lemon Wallet is not my app of choice for backing up my wallet. On iPhone, I think Adaptu is a better option, and Android users should be curious about, but not necessarily yet sign up for, Google Wallet. By and large, virtual wallet apps just aren't ready to be used yet the way they're intended—as a complete mobile payment replacement system, but they're getting close. Mobile wallet companies have to take security very seriously, and a PIN requirement to enter the app itself should be the absolute bare minimum, which Lemon Wallet neglects to do. If you're interested in mobile payments and living a wallet-less lifestyle, be an early adopter of Google Wallet, Pay With Square, or LevelUp. And skip the lemons.
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