Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

Out of Financial Chaos, Futurist Predicts Cashless Society and Robocops

September 19, 2008

Telegraph - After a week when it’s been impossible to predict which financial giant will still be standing at the end of the day, let alone the year, it would seem like a fool’s errand to talk about decades down the line.

These days, if you raise your gaze to the horizon, you’ll find experts warning of a host of problems: melting ice caps, global pandemics, terrorism, the end of oil, meteor strikes, even robot uprisings.

It’s all too easy to become paralysed by such possibilities – and yes, there are ideas, discoveries and events over the horizon that we can’t possibly comprehend. But while the future is unknown and unwritten, we can begin to trace its outline, and prepare the first drafts.

For example, the financial services industry has been in quite a state recently. Despite today’s troubles, we can say that we’ll always need banking and insurance. But will we get them from the same places? Asda and Tesco already sell insurance alongside carrots and spaghetti, and are certain to expand their offerings.

What would happen to the big banks if Wal-Mart, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Vodafone all applied for banking licences to deliver services such as electronic payment, as I believe they will? And will we still need high street branches staffed by human beings once artificial intelligence really kicks in, and you can talk to a machine that’s checking the market every second for the best loan or insurance policy?

Even the nature of how we pay for such things will be different. It is estimated that by 2020, only 10 per cent of financial transactions will be in cash. We can safely predict that the idea of money as a physical object might well become extinct not long after – especially if a global pandemic starts us thinking about all the germs on those grubby notes. Instead, digital transactions will be made through computers, or cell phones, or even chips inserted into our forearms.

Wherever you look in society, massive changes will be taking place. If my predictions are accurate, by 2050 there won’t be DVDs, or national currencies, or a monarchy, or a unified Belgium, but we might well have a ladder into space, robotic policemen and diets based on our individual genome. I’ve picked out some of the more important or exotic arrivals and departures in the list below.

If it feels slightly overwhelming, remember that too much information, twinned with not enough time, is something we will all have to get used to in the future.

However, if you want a simpler take, there are five key factors to remember.

The first is aging. In Japan, the percentage of people aged over 75 is forecast to increase by 36 per cent between 2005 and 2015, meaning that taxes would have to go up by 175 per cent in a generation to maintain current levels of benefit.

We’re spending a record amount on pharmaceuticals, but we’ll spend more on them as we age – and on technology to replace or store our memories, and refurbish our worn-out bodies (not to mention ways of designing packaging that those with weak hands and poor eyesight can actually open).

Second, the environment will remain vitally important, but climate change won’t be the only game in town – the approach of peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, peak water, peak uranium and even peak people (a severe shortage of workers in many parts of the world) will also have an impact, and require a profound shift towards sustainability.

In political and economic terms, the shift of power to the east, and the rise of countries such as China and India, will continue – the third factor to remember.

We already know that the world is getting smaller, and the fourth idea – greater connectivity – will continue to change how people live, work and think. One billion of us are already online, and this is expected to double within a decade or so. As a result, privacy will be dead or dying – but we may get smarter at making decisions, because our connectivity will allow instant polling of a crowd whose wisdom is nearly always greater than any single member’s.

Finally, there is technology. As the “Grin” technologies converge – genetics, robotics, internet and nanotechnology – we could see self-replicating machines, with intelligence equal to or greater than our own. We might be able to download not only our memories but also our consciousness into such a machine, and live for ever inside it. And to think that in 2008 we were worried about getting too much email.

The future will not be a singular experience, and nor is it a foregone conclusion. Some of us will embrace technology and globalisation, while others will try to escape them.

If history teaches us anything, it is that revolutionary thinking can overturn so-called inevitabilities and impossibilities. But even when it feels, as it has this week, like the end of the world, it’s better at least to start thinking about the future, than not to think about it at all.

Citibank's Computers Down, Blocking Account Info

Editors's Note: I suspect this is just the beginning of problems with electronic banking:"By first removing cash and then by introducing problems into electronic money systems while simultaneously promoting microchip implants as a safe and acceptable alternative, the global elite will lead us slowly into accepting personal implant technology. Already, we are being conditioned to accept the loss of our civil liberties with the passing of the Patriot Act, as well as the loss of our privacy with warrantless wiretapping and tracking systems such as GPS devices in our cars and cell phones."

December 17, 2008

AP - Customers of New York City-based Citibank have lost access to much of their account information because of a computer outage. Many of the troubled bank's clients haven't been able to retrieve account details online or by telephone since Tuesday afternoon. Others can access only parts of their account profiles. Citibank telephone representatives say they don't know what caused the outage but technicians are working to fix it. They've been telling customers to call back after Wednesday morning. A Citibank spokeswoman hasn't replied to a phone message or an e-mail sent after business hours.

Citibank is a division of Citigroup Inc., which is struggling to survive the global financial crisis with billions of dollars in aid from the government.

Shoppers to Use Fingerprints or Eye Scans to Pay for Goods

September 8, 2008

Telegraph - The futuristic systems, like those used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, are being developed by scientists for Barclaycard.

The company has announced it is investing a seven-figure sum in “contactless payment” technology.

This allows customers to use everyday items they carry around with them – such as mobile phones, key fobs or even their eyes or fingerprints – to make payments.

It means shoppers will no longer have to rely on cards.

Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays, has already introduced a new-style cash machine in the United Arab Emirates enabling people to use their fingerprints to withdraw money and shoppers in the UK may soon be able to use the same technology.

Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclaycard, said:

“It’s possible we’ll see an end to plastic in the next five to 10 years with new technologies to take its place emerging now. It could turn out to be one of the shortest lived payment methods in history, going from being ubiquitous to a museum piece in the same way as the video cassette.”

Barclaycard also aims to have one million customers upgraded to its contactless payment system OnePulse by the end of the year. OnePulse enables people to buy items for less than £10 by touching their card against a sensor, without even having to take it out of their wallet. It can also be used as an Oyster card on London transport.

Barclaycard said people may soon be able to hover their mobile over the price label of an item in a shop, confirm their purchase and take it away without having to go to a checkout or get a receipt.
Mr Jenkins said:

“If I had said to you 10 years ago that you couldn’t pay with a cheque at the supermarket, you wouldn’t have believed me. That is now the reality, and we see plastic cards going the same way eventually.”