Credit cards and electronic wallet

I was watching this video the other day, and wondering about the convenience of the thing. Ideally, yes, it would be nice to have one card to rule them all, and say adios forever to fat wallets full of plastic.

My first though after the foreseeable reaction to the video (that was, “COOL!”) was if this whole scheme is possible. As:

• the device shown in the video have only a magstripe; most cards nowadays use the chip
• in many jurisdictions, the rule is still “the merchant is not permitted to accept a credit card in the absence of the cardholder and without presentation of the credit card“; and this device - at the end - is a copy of a physical card.

Same reasoning, you may say, was done by many other companies, when they proclaim that payments, in the future, will all be made with a mobile phone, not with the conventional credit card.

But what are the phone advantages? PIN, you can have also on the card. Size? not an issue, as a card (or a “card replacement” like the one shown), has a negligible weight and size. A card doesn’t run out of battery, doesn’t break if fall on the ground, can be replaced easily.

I think phones will be extensively used to “emulate” cards in the near future (the likes of digital wallets like google wallets), but there will still be a market for “traditional” plastic payment cards.

About the issue I mention above (the regulator mandating that the physical credit card is presented, in order to execute the transaction), does anyone knows what the regulation says in different countries?