@tiger: mobile payment is still to divided a market to threaten credit cards. The mobile payment solution I use daily is only available in my country. If I go to the US or China, I have to use their respective solutions. So the advantage of online payment - universal usage - isn't playing out.

@alienew: transactions are no longer anonymous. Elites get to control individuals even more, get to know even more details about their lives. And of every transaction, a certain share goes to the provider - whereas cash transactions fully stay with the two parties involved.

Moreover, the system is designed in a way that only a few providers are possible - there won't be thousands of competitors.

@alien. If you rely on cash, and do not have a bank account, you would be excluded under the system. Cash if free to access. Mobile payment systems require a phone and a phone contract. All this before we even think about how big data will be used to put some people into a risk category with restrictions or fee barriers.

If you think this sounds like a conspiracy theory, insurance companies are already charging higher premiums to people with hotmail email addresses.www.theguardian.com/[...] Descrmination based on other e-habits are also likely.

@kurtosis. everything you say used to be true of credit and debit cards. Universal usage was the banks dream, and it came true for cards. It will follow for mobile epayments as well, with time.

@tiger: but you can still pay by cash - and that's the important thing. Anonymous, free transactions are possible.
If banks manage to lobby governments into forcing the whole population to use their channels as they did in Italy for transactions above 1000 Euros, people lose a certain amount freedom and privacy. Banks (or other companies) accordingly gain power over them.
Why should people at the bank see where I spend my money on the weekends?

Also, universal usage is anything but working for credit cards. Try using VISA to pay in China or Europe to get by. You will often be told to use another card or cash.

Yes, you can still pay in cash, currently. Credit card usage is still not truly universal (big data will help here).

Which way are things going, towards cash or away from cash?

Like most people I believe that moving away from cash is a bad thing, for manifold reasons.

@tiger, kurtosis: Get your points, though it sounds more like unrepresentative bureaucratic Control and Surveillance than 'class' per se...but then, yeah...
kurtosis, I rely one cash, but the bank down the street keeps it for me until I need it - of course that's always been a matter of Surveillance and Control (fueling Class), but not to the degree of possibility that you describe.

Like Tony Soprano used to say, dismissively, when crap came down: "Eh, whaddaya gonna do."