Dreams of a cashless society; Virtual money v the real thing.(Finance and Economics)(the increasing use of online payments, such as through PayPal)

Economist (US), The, May, 2001

WHISPERING into your wristwatch or waving your mobile phone could one day be enough to trigger a whole host of (with luck, intentional) financial transactions. The bargain might be anything from paying a newsagent to downloading digital music, buying a train ticket, sending cash to a relative, or trading shares on the Internet.

In Finland you can already pay for a car-wash using your mobile. In Hong Kong you can walk through ticket barriers and buy fast food with a flourish of your Octopus stored-value card. In Russia you can buy a scratch-card to put money into a PayCash account on the Internet, to gamble or just to spend. Qpass lets you pay for articles from the online Wall Street Journal. Mobile-phone users in Germany, Austria and Spain can, in theory, use...

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