海角大神

"This isn't just my聽wallet. It's an organizer, a memory, and an old friend," George Costanza in one of the most famous episodes of "Seinfeld." Jerry doesn't miss a beat: "Well, your friend is morbidly obese," he responds.

The gag is funny precisely because it rang so true: How many of us have to had wrangle with a wallet or purse that seems to be overflowing with cash, coins, receipts, and cards?聽

Enter Coin, a new California start-up backed by the聽Y Combinator incubator. Coin is essentially a card cruncher: It stores information from up to eight cards 鈥� which can include credit, debit, gift, or membership cards, to The Verge 鈥� and allows users to swipe it in ATMs or readers. (Coin loyalty and benefits programs on your cards won't be affected.) You toggle from one card to another with the circular button on the face of the device.聽

Coin to begin selling the cards sometime next year. Assuming, of course, the company can raise enough cash. As reps for the company point out on the official site, "creating and manufacturing new devices is expensive." In an effort to drum up some early cash, Coin is gearing up for a kind of crowd-funding campaign, via $50 pre-orders. (Once the device is officially rolled out, it will cost $100.)聽

"We will directly use the crowd-funded campaign's money to do manufacturing to buy the parts and to get the production lines ready so we can start producing higher quantities,"聽Kanishk Parashar, the CEO and founder of Coin, CNET in an interview this week.聽

So will Coin catch on among consumers?聽

Well, VentureBeat's聽Devindra Hardawar, for one, is optimistic.聽

"Who wouldn鈥檛 want to slim down all of the cards they鈥檙e carrying?" he . "It鈥檚 also worth noting that most consumers won鈥檛 have to change their habits much when using Coin, something that鈥檚 also holding mobile payments back. Even Square and PayPal, which don鈥檛 rely on near-field communications, requires you to completely rethink how you interact with cashiers when checking out."聽