For a few months now, when I go out, I leave my wallet at home. If I have to buy something, anything, the smartphone is enough. I have a credit card on Apple Pay, I double-click the external button, the card appears, I hold the phone close to the cash register reader and the payment is done. In the businesses where I find Satispay, however, which are increasingly frequent in Rome, I have chosen this method which doesn’t even require a credit card, and therefore has zero commissions, and is connected directly to my bank account: here too, they are enough two clicks, I launch the app, choose the merchant, write the amount and off I go. Less than 10 seconds.
These things have been technologically possible for several years but have only now become widespread practice. I pay for practically everything this way, even fruit at the market, even coffee in the car, one euro and 20, and no one complains; taxi drivers who once looked askance at you if you asked to pay by card are very rare; and the same goes for the shopkeepers who told you “sorry, doctor, my POS is broken”. Indeed, there are some around with a sign next to the cash register that says: we prefer digital payments. In short, the predictions that we are moving towards a cashless society finally seem realistic.
Today the Digital Payments Observatory said that digital and cash payments will become equal in 2023. This is an unstoppable leap forward, which started in the year of the pandemic and has now become stable: the fact of paying with a smartphone has entered common culture. This brings various advantages but the most relevant is not personal comfort: it is the fight against tax evasion. In fact, a digital payment is recorded and tracked and cannot be evaded. The only ones who lose out are those who beg: in the United States we are starting to see the first beggars with Pos.