I watched my partner fill his pockets this morning with cash, door keys and his wallet before leaving the house … good thing he has a belt.
Luckily for all those British men with an aversion to man bags, their wallets and all those jingling coins will soon become a thing of the past as the world of mobile moves forward at breakneck speed.
The retail industry is experiencing a revolution as significant as the introduction of plastic payments in the 1950s or the launch of the internet and e-commerce in the early 1990s. The mobile device, an object we all check more than 200 times every day, is changing the way we discover and buy everything. Mobile apps can now simulate checkout experiences and transfer money instantly.
PayPal predicts that in just four years we won’t have any physical wallets. Visa Europe has said that 50% of all its transactions will be made via mobile in eight years, and retailers are already reporting that up to 12% of their traffic comes from mobile channels and that figure is exploding rapidly.
The demand for actual cash will increasingly become a thing of the past and I expect that children born today in the UK will become the first cashless generation.
I’ll be pleased – I won’t have to carry everyone else’s stuff in my handbag. In fact maybe I’ll abandon it altogether!
