[Jake232]

I think it's interesting that we can now pay almost anybody we have contact with, at almost zero effort and without even having to remove my debit card from my wallet.

You can pay people via gmail now for your email contacts, send money to your personal friends via social media networking. I bought my Uber to work this morning completely frictionless without having to physically use my card.

It's an interesting development of recent years for sure.

[TheSoftwareGuy]

I mean, in reality, we are just back where we started. cash & checkbooks used to do this very well, until people needed online payments.

[berdon]

Not really. Cash and checkbooks require you pulling out a some form of tender, divvying out the correct amount or writing the amount out, and then handing the tender to the cashier.

Now, using Uber as an example, I request a car, get into the car, and leave the car. You never even need to open the app back up after requesting a car.

[dntrkv]

How are we back where we started? If I need to send my friend a payment and they are not in the same room with me, I couldn't do it with cash or checkbooks. Now I could send a friend money in about 5 clicks on my phone.

[superuser2]

Cash is nearly useless for payments between friends becase everyone only ever has $20s, if they have cash at all.