Prediction: the ubiquity of the electronic infrastructure will make most of the functions of the modern bank obsolete. Simple transactions can be handled electronically for very little cost. Lending and saving transactions are more complicated, but in the right framework could probably be automated or even distributed to a high degree.
There's no technological reason why you can't have a single card serving multiple functions - from Cash to ATM to Credit to ID to License to Portfolio - and while there's an obvious efficiency advantage there are big questions about counterfeiting, privacy, theft, reliability, and infrastructure-independent person-to-person transactions.
The big question is how this would affect processes in place that control the creation and destruction of money, and whether newer systems could improve upon the existing one (money exists as a form of debt to a bank, which can create it through processes such as fractional lending). The big caveat is that banks are too rich to ever let anyone take over their business or take it in a direction they don't want. Make no mistake, they're in this for the money.
I said they CAN be handled cheaply. Not that they are now. Why should changing a few bits of information on a couple of accounts cost so much money, when the same can be done with nicely manufactured pieces of paper and metal for nothing? Answer: the electronic transactions have to go through a mess of for-profit banks who charge whatever they can get away with at every exchange, because the Fed does not provide for electronic Federal Reserve Notes or any other electronic alternative.
So many possibilities. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no technological reason why you can't have a single card serving multiple functions - from Cash to ATM to Credit to ID to License to Portfolio - and while there's an obvious efficiency advantage there are big questions about counterfeiting, privacy, theft, reliability, and infrastructure-independent person-to-person transactions.
The big question is how this would affect processes in place that control the creation and destruction of money, and whether newer systems could improve upon the existing one (money exists as a form of debt to a bank, which can create it through processes such as fractional lending). The big caveat is that banks are too rich to ever let anyone take over their business or take it in a direction they don't want. Make no mistake, they're in this for the money.
Wonder who'll be at that conference?
"little cost??" (Score:2)
You obviously don't have a merchant account. Retail stores often pay $0.25 per transaction, plus upwards fo 3%. That's not cheap.
Re:"little cost??" (Score:2)