Credit And Bank Information May Soon Become Virtual
As the electronic revolution continues, the next thing that consumers may see to go virtual may be money.
Actually, the move to make money go virtual has long been developing. Nowadays, consumers can easily pay for purchases made through the internet with the use of a virtual form of payment – basically electronic signals being sent, confirming that money has been transferred from a bank account to a merchant. However, for leading virtual payment processor, PayPal, that’s just not enough.
“What we’re trying to do and what we think is very important is to displace the use of cash or checks. We’ll just have one wallet, and it lives in the cloud”, Scott Thompson, president of PayPal said.
Consumers may no longer carry around credit cards and cash in their wallets anymore. They would no longer need them to make purchases. Their bank account and credit information would be stored in remote computers and would be accessible to them anywhere and at anytime. Their purchasing options would no longer be limited and they would be able to pay virtually through the web, through a regular cash register and even through their cellphones.
Already, new virtual applications are introducing innovative ways for consumers to shop. One such application, ShopSavvy, resides in the consumer’s camera phone, ready to scan the bar codes of any item that the consumer is interested in. Once a bar code is scanned, the application can go online and find out if that item is available online at a lower price.
The move to make money virtual would inevitably be followed by a larger portion of the economy going virtual as well and, as PayPal sees it, the benefits would be considerable. According to the company, their virtual service is making the checkout process a more convenient and secure experience not only for buyers but for merchants as well.
Payment methods have changed only a few times in human history. At first everyone was bartering goods, then coins became popular. Paper bills soon began replacing coins and then checks and bank drafts became an alternative to paper money. During the 1950s, banks began issuing credit cards and today, credit cards are fast replacing cash as a payment standard. With the electronic revolution and the virtual payment methods being pioneered by major companies such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, it isn’t hard to imagine that the next payment method could become purely electronic.
Lawrence H. White is an economics professor at George Mason University specializing in the history of money. He said, “It just keeps getting more and more convenient to get access to your money and transfer it to someone else. When everyone has a cellphone, why reach into your wallet?”
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