<i>Milne said that the value of mobile was in predictive behaviour, so you could walk into a café and it would immediately trigger the barista to create your usual coffee. "It think that's going to be a big driver for mobile."</i><p>Ugh, is that supposed to be a compelling argument?
If there's a need for cash, it will exist in some form.<p>If the governments of the world get rid of cash, meaning all of our transactions are identifiable and traceable by gov'ts and corporations an immediate black-market cash system of some kind will spring up. Of course, they'll make it illegal, and if caught then you'll go to jail just for buying something legal but embarrassing. Then various methods will be invented to help ensure people aren't caught as easily.<p>Such is the way of things.
we have in Germany the so called "Moneycard" ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte</a> ), which is quite anonymous, and misses any kind of authentication.
Interesting would be to be able to transfer the amounts from one moneycard to the some other moneycard, same way I would give someone a 5 Euro bill in hand. This seems to be impossible ( or forbidden).
At this moment the uses are just to buy transportation tickets, cigarettes or parking fees. Since is totally offline, it behaves like money, but electronic. Paying with this takes a 0.3% of amount for the transaction.
So, if someone could monetize this, we would totally forget the banknotes or coins. However, you still need interraction with some terminal to load it, so it similar to going to an ATM and fetch the real money.
What - you mean like the Diety of Cryptography (Bruce Schneier) figured out how to do 10+ years ago ? <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471117099?ie=UTF8&tag=barcobeast-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0471117099" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471117099?ie=UTF8&tag=...</a>
Sunde is partly right, I guess. There are things that probably most people don't want to appear on their credit card statement. But then again, there are enough people who already use their credit cards for paying for shady services or for porn and they don't give a damn.