Member-only story
The payment revolution will not be televised (Blockchain Society 5/6)
The payment revolution has been going on for years. In many places it has already happened. Your country might not yet be on the list, but the genie is out of the bottle… And it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, Libra, or any other cryptocurrency.
Switzerland, November 2019
I am at a gas stop on my way to Berne, to visit my friends. I just finish topping up our gas tank — 39 Swiss Franks— when I realize that all my cash is in Euro. I have no Swiss Franks at all. Fortunately, I still have an account at Postfinance, and their ATM card.
I fumble out the card, and touch it to the RFID reader. The machine thanks me for my service. That’s it.
While my German friend is continuing to drive through the Swiss traffic jam, I am trying to get some internet to contact my Swiss friends on WhatsApp, so I type a code on my mobile to activate a flat-rate package for my old Swiss pre-paid SIM. I get two messages — an “Activation Successful”, and a “You are running out of cash”: the annoying Swiss telemarketers calling me on my Swiss number in Thailand have used up the little reserve I had put on it two years ago. I log in to my Postfinance account — the one with the ATM card —using a mobile app, and top up the SIM with a few clicks.
