The Death of Cash and the Future of Payments [Infographic]

Disruption is one of technology's fortés. It has successfully made the typewriter, the gramophone and the 3 1/2-inch floppy disk obsolete. While some might mourn the loss of certain pieces of retro technology, they shouldn't. That's the way technology has always been.

What's the next sector due for a head-spinning dance with the evolution of technology? Payments. There's an explosion of interest and activity in the sector as payments are going mobile and fewer people rely on cold hard cash.

This cashless economy really got its start with the credit card, which replaced paper and coin currency with a single plastic card. But for the past 20 years or so, payments haven't really stretched beyond the emergence of the credit card. But now, that's about to change.

Voucher Codes, a U.K.-based shopping and coupon site, takes a look at the overall payment landscape in its "Payment Wars" infographic. The infographic stacks mobile point of sale with contactless payment, carrier billing and online wallets. It's early to say if one or many of these new payment type will claim victory over the other, but it's safe to say that users now have plenty of payment options to choose from.

Here are a few highlights from the payments infographic.

• $670 billion is the dollar amount of transactions that mobile POS is estimated to process by 2015
• $320 billion is the dollar amount of transactions that contactless payments are estimated to process by 2016
• 40 to 90 percent is the amount that carriers deduct from direct carrier billing
• $315 million the amount of transactions that PayPal processes a day

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