Last Saturday's Chronicle had a fascinating 48 Hours feature on how people were using apps provided by their banks to pay their bills and generally shuffle their funds about - it was shopping without a purse; without a credit card even.
But the cashless future could even see the end of banks - certainly the sort of ones on Victoria Ave that you can actually walk into and talk to people.
One day that stuff you have under your mattress might only be good for a spot on Antiques Roadshow.
As someone who used to get sixpence pocket money and started his working life picking up a small brown envelope chokka with pound notes, this seems something of a leap into the unknown, even though I have now mastered the pleasures of internet banking.
But I worry for the greyer section of our society.
There are plenty of older folk already struggling with the fact that every business, agency and utility that they deal with now seems only to exist online.
There's no office to visit and no staff to answer your queries, and their telephone answering service only wants to direct you to "our website", where you can download the relevant forms or the rummage through the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. It is reluctant to let you actually speak to a real human being and if you do not have access to a computer, it basically doesn't want to know you.
So if we are going down this path (and it is likely we are), then there is a responsibility on Government and on these various businesses and organisations to see that no one is left behind.
We have SeniorNet to help get our longer-in-the-tooth citizens computer literate, but that is only a beginning, not an end.
Some serious resource needs to be put into bringing those from the old school into the brave new world.
