Who Owns Ekster?

Ekster began in 2015 when Momma and Scharnigg, two Dutch students in the United States on Fulbright scholarships, kept complaining about the bulky bifold wallets everyone carried. They met Canneman, who had a track record building businesses, and pitched a slim card-focused wallet with a trick: a spring-loaded mechanism that fans cards out at the press of a button.

The first Kickstarter campaign in 2015 funded within hours and ran far past its goal. The team used the momentum to solve the next problem, lost wallets, by pairing the wallet with a credit-card-sized solar-powered tracker that connects to a phone. Selling the tracker as a separate accessory gave Ekster a product ecosystem years before Apple's AirTag normalized item tracking.

Through the late 2010s the catalog expanded: the Parliament wallet became the flagship, joined by the Senate, Aluminum Cardholder, and leather goods in multiple finishes. Tracker products evolved from a proprietary card to versions compatible with Apple's Find My network and Google's Android finding network, plus a Finder Card for broader everyday carry items. Ekster added key organizers, backpacks, laptop sleeves, and MagSafe-compatible phone accessories.

The company earned B Corp certification and crossed one million customers with more than 50,000 five-star reviews. Review outlets including Forbes, Business Insider, WIRED, and CNET have repeatedly named Ekster the best smart wallet, and the brand has run more than a dozen crowdfunding campaigns to finance new categories.