Smart(phone) Money

1. How long do you think it's going to take to get to all virtual cards? How many years? (1 point)
Why? (1 point)
For our society to replace everything inside a physical wallet into a digital wallet definitely won’t be a short process however it shouldn’t be that much longer for the next generation to get used to and adapt to it. For instance, our parents’ generation prefers CDs and DVDs while our generation is perfectly fine with things in the digital format (such as songs stored in Mp3 players). As of putting this amount of time needed into numerical format, I believe it should take around aprroximately 10-18 years in order for everything to be replaced. I chose this number because that is probably the amount of time it would take for the next generation to grow up to an age where they are old enough to handle “virtual cards” and all the digital formats that people are inventing nowadays.

2. Who will not be on board with this new virtual wallet? (2 point)
I think the older generation probably won’t be on board with this virtual wallet because like mentioned above, they are the ones who preferred using CDs and DVDs, and they probably will also be the ones who would rather prefer the tactile experience of a currency holder over the convenience of a digital alternative. Just like printed books and newspapers, although we have online/digital books and newspapers, there are still those who prefer a daily purchase of newspaper.

3. What companies are going to be affected negatively by this? Name 3 (3 points)
The companies that are going to be affected negatively would be Mastercard companies, Interact, american express, etc. People will be using mastercards (credit cards), interact (debit cards) way less frequently than before because everything will be replaced with NFC (Near-field communications). As the demand for these cards go down, the companies would therefore make a lot less.

4. which industries are going to make money from this? Name 3 (3 points)
Cell phone carrier companies (telus), wireless internet companies(shaw), and any places that produces the virtual cards would be benefiting greatly from this change. Aside from all those, branded smartphone companies such as Blackberry, Apple, HTC, etc would be making big bucks from this operation. If everything goes as planned and the virtual cards idea receives wide acceptance, the usage of smartphones would increase tremendously creating a great demand for them.

Article: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/04/23/smart-phone-money/