# Payment Systems

By [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2) · 2022-10-12

---

I remember the first time I paid with my phone at a store.

It was a CVS and it blew the mind of the person at the cash register. She had never seen it before.

There’s probably a blog post in my archives about that somewhere.

Today, of course, we’ve all seen it.

Not only that, it’s become the dominant form of payment (along with the credit card tap, I suppose).

What’s remarkable is how cash is disappearing.

I’ve been fortunate, over the past few months, to visit Finland, Spain, Israel, UK, France, Switzerland, and Iceland.

You know how many times I used cash-combined-in all of those places?

None.

That’s right. I didn’t touch any paper currency. It was all credit cards and phones.

There was one taxi service in Wales that only took cash, but my co-rider paid and I reimbursed her via PayPal, so that was a close call.

In 10 years, we’ve gone from “mind blowing” to “every day occurrence.”

Now, I’m projecting 10 years out and the part I am wondering is whether the 3% of every single credit card/digital transaction that currently is taken out of the system by intermediaries will be put back into the system?

I have no idea, but I do know that when I did a crypto payment for the first time, I experienced a “mind blowing” experience.

We’ll see.

---

*Originally published on [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2/payment-systems)*