Maps or smartphones

David Birch, economist, believes that the future of money: when the disappears, the payment tool will not be plastic cash, but mobile phones.

For now, payments with a mobile application are not very convenient, because they are tied to a certain bank. You use a card and mobile application of your bank, and for transferring to customers of another bank you pay a commission. In Russia, there is no universal application that would work with all banks and transfer money to any user, but in the future this may change.

For example, in Sweden, since 2012, there is an application Swish, which allows you to transfer money between customers of all major banks of the country without commission and subscription fee for individuals. Now this application is used by more than half of the adult population of the country. Similar services exist in other European countries: iDeal in the Netherlands and Siitro in Finland.

In the future, a full transition to mobile payments through a single application and even a complete refusal of bank cards is possible.