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Keyrings

Mobile phones are of limited use for payments as they are disposable technology. You change it whenever you feel like it; they break; their batteries run out.

I've never changed my keyring, it doesn't break and has no battery.

In fact, I already have a payment device of sorts on my keyring - it's a Tesco clubcard key fob. It has a barcode that you scan to get "loyalty points". But it could as easily be a contactless chip.

Sport teaches us that if there is a gap or loophole in the rules, someone will eventually discover it and exploit it - until it is banned by the rules. Sport is littered with examples, ranging from the F1 example above, to bodyline bowling in cricket, through to the backpass in football.

Evolutionary biology is similar - altruism (i.e. self regulation) only works if all sides benefit. Cleaner fish are not eaten when they clean the mouths of larger fish, as the former benefit from the food they find and the latter benefit more from a clean mouth than a quick meal. In the financial world, FIs all get together to fight fraud, as the disadvantage of one organisation facilitating fraudsters would be outweighed by the sanctions the others would apply to it.

Otherwise, the rules applied by nature (the regulatory environment) are all that counts.

For person to person, why not use cash. Or indeed mobile to mobile payment.

Is there a need to transfer from mobile to a plastic token and then physically give that plastic token to another person who then moves it to their mobile in turn. Unless this is the replacement for cheques?