Quantcast
Channel: The Networked Society Blog » money
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

What will money look like 20 years from now?

0
0

Editor’s note: Today we are featuring an excerpt from a post on the future of money from Ericsson’s Call to Change blog. It was written by Lisa Elénius Taylor, Marketing Manager for M-commerce:

Things have changed a lot in the past twenty years when it comes to money. In 1995, credit cards and checks were the norm, along with good old cash, of course. Discussions in the financial press looked to the future of money as being predominantly digital, which it is today: “Digital money is the ultimate–and inevitable–medium of exchange for an increasingly wired world,” wrote Kelley Holland and Amy Cortese in Business Week that year.

“With E-cash, you’ll no longer need to carry a wad of bills in your pocket or fumble for exact change,” they continue. “Instead, you might carry a credit-card-size piece of plastic with an embedded microchip that you will ”load” up with E-money you buy with traditional currency. Or, you might store your digital coins and dollars–downloaded over phone lines from your bank or other issuer of E-money–on your PC or in an electronic ”wallet,” a palm-size device used to store and transmit E-money”.

What I love about this quote is not just the apparent naivety of the scope of the impending digital revolution, which is still transforming industries beyond the wildest dreams we had in the 1990s, but that it predicts a future in which the traditional banking industry, mobile network operators, and other players like financial service providers or fintech innovators all play key roles in delivering services: “…you might store your digital coins and dollars–downloaded over phone lines from your bank or other issuer of E-money”.

Later on in the article, the authors list the pros and cons of “The New World Of E-Cash”, which is worth a read:

THE GOOD

  • E-cash is more convenient and flexible than traditional money. It can be used by consumers and businesses, and for everything from buying wares on the Internet to lending a pal five bucks.
  • Banks that issue E-cash could find it much cheaper than handling checks and the paper records that accompany traditional money.
  • Consumers doing business on the Internet will find some forms of electronic money afford much greater privacy than using ordinary credit cards.

THE BAD

  • Uncontrolled growth of E-cash systems could undermine bank- and government-controlled money systems, giving rise to a confusing and inefficient Babel of competing systems.
  • E-cash may be less secure than bank money: Money stored on a PC could be lost forever if the system crashes.
  • E-cash could foster a have and have-not society: Those with PCs would have ready access to the stuff, while those without, many of them low-income consumers, would not.

AND THE UGLY

  • Money laundering and tax evasion could proliferate in stateless E-money systems as criminals use untraceable cyberdollars to hide assets offshore.
  • Counterfeiters could create their own personal mints of E-cash that would be indistinguishable from real money.
  • If computer hackers or other criminals were to break into E-cash systems, they could instantaneously filch the electronic wealth of thousands or even millions of innocent consumers.

These are all valid points. While the use of the adjective “cyber” is thankfully a thing of the past in most circles, the arguments and fears the authors describe have all played important roles in the building up of today’s mobile money ecosystem. Customer value and the benefits of paperless banking (The GOOD) are unquestionably at the forefront of today’s thought leadership surrounding financial services, while security issues, regulation and inequality (THE BAD) continue to be hot topics.

As for fraud and other threats (THE UGLY), encoded and encrypted walls of security will always be more effective than transporting huge amounts of used bank notes for masked criminal gangs to try and steal like in great 1990s movies like Point Break.

Whatever the future holds for money over the next twenty years and beyond, Ericsson will be right there helping bridge the void between players so that everyone will benefit.

What do you think money will be like in 20 years from now?

You can read the entire post on the Call to Change blog here: http://www1.ericsson.com/m-commerce/blog/what-will-money-look-20-years-now

The post What will money look like 20 years from now? appeared first on The Networked Society Blog.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images