Although I’ve never lost my wallet before, I now have a wallet tracker in it, in the hope that, should I lose it in future, I can use Apple’s Find My network to find it again.
The specific wallet tracker card I’ve bought is the Loshall Card. It’s available for £20 on Amazon (sponsored link), but I bought mine from AliExpress. I paid £6.09 for it, but it’s currently selling for £8.50 – still, that’s half the price of Amazon. And, it’s considerably cheaper than Spotminders, who advertise heavily on social media but charge £37 (plus postage) for basically the same thing.
Pairing and charging
The Loshall Card is shaped like a standard credit card, but is about double the thickness. It should fit snugly in your wallet in a standard card slot. To set it up, you scan a QR code included in a leaflet in the package, which opens Apple’s Find My app and allows you to pair the card to your iCloud account. Your wallet tracker card will then show on an ‘Items’ tab in the Find My app, and as long as it’s in Bluetooth range of another Apple device, you should be able to see where it is at all times.
The battery inside the Loshall Card isn’t removable, but can be recharged wirelessly using any Qi wireless charger. A full charge should last around 4 months, which is less than other wallet tracker cards, but the Apple Find My app should show its charge level. There’s also a tiny LED on the card that shows red whilst charging, and green when fully charged.
If you do need to locate your wallet, you can use the Apple Find My app to play a sound on the Loshall Card. It’ll make a little beeping noise, but it’s quite quiet.
Using the Loshall card wallet tracker
I’ve had my card a couple of months and it’s worked well – up to a point. Several weeks ago, I had an alert that I’d left my wallet behind at work – my first day back in the office post-injury – when I hadn’t. It appeared that the card had crashed and had stopped pinging its location until I charged it, even though it had been fully charged a few days earlier. That seems to have been the only niggle, and it’s worth remembering it was significantly cheaper than many other wallet tracker cards. If it fails again, then I may need to think about buying a better one that I can rely on; I wouldn’t want to lose my wallet at a time when the card fails.
Only for Apple devices
It should be noted that this model of Loshall Card only works with Apple devices. Android devices have their own network called Find Hub, and so if you have an Android phone, you will need a different wallet tracker device.
It’s also worth noting that Tile, the original tracker device company, uses a separate, third network called Life360, and so its wallet tracker card won’t work with Apple Find My or Android Find Hub. Nowadays, I generally wouldn’t recommend Tile devices, as the Apple and Android networks are larger and so you’re more likely to find your lost devices on these. Which is a shame, as I used to use Tile trackers quite a bit before the pandemic. I still have several, but their batteries are long dead, and whilst the batteries can be replaced easily, I think I’d rather buy new trackers with better support.
