Courtesy of the founder of Twitter, you can now accept credit card payments on your mobile phone. Could this potentially be a very real step away from coin & currency? Unfortunately, I think so Square: https://squareup.com/features
I never rely on plastic or sending payments over the air waves to many opportunities for thieves my Son got 4 credit cards stolen at work and he knows who did it, he reported to the police and they Said there was nothing they could do as the bank will not prosecute unless the transaction is over $25,000 that makes me sick! my son got all of his money back but it was still a royal pain!!
We as a culture have been taking the steps toward using less physical money for decades now. From credit cards, debit cards, to paypal. It is getting easier to use with all of these so widely accepted everywhere. I think there will always be physical money, but people even today do not carry cash very often. But, it is a written rule for me; I always make my purchases at coin shops and shows with cash.
Like you guys I pay with cash most of the time. A lot of people today though, do pay businesses with debit or credit card most of the time. Couldn't this technology be used so two people in a person-to-person exchange (outside a business setting) could use credit rather than cash? I know that two possessions of mine that are always very near are my cell phone and credit card.
I'm not trying to bring religion into the mix (I'm not really a religious guy) but this sounds alot like that Mark Of The Beast stuff people talk about http://www.countdown.org/mark_of_the_beast.htm
You know, I'm starting to see a lot of businesses in the area I live wanting to take cash over credit. Some places even offer discounts if using cash (which I try to do whenever possible).
It's a great business philosophy if you don't like paying those fees to credit card companies. But, checks can and do bounce, and there are counterfeit bills out there. We used to get three or four a year on average. So, you just have to pick your poison I guess.