I've never been to such an event where using your smartphone to pay was mandatory, it's usually just much faster and more convenient.

At many smaller venues, a credit card (or tap-to-pay) is required, and I'm 100% in favor of that. We should be doing more to help provide unbanked people with credit cards. Requiring small businesses to deal with cash is increasingly a burden; cashless enables them to save a lot of time and money.

This is the wrong approach, because the laws around payment cards require they be strongly linked to ID, allowing point and click shutdown/freezing of anyone's ability to transact.

When you can't pay a lawyer, and you can't pay a taxi to get to your lawyer, and you can't buy food, and it's all because the government pointed a finger without evidence, prior to trial, the system is a bad one.

The ability to use cash must be preserved. You really don't want to live in the world where the only payments are the ones the government explicitly allows.

This. Apart from not wanting to be tethered to my phone 24/7, I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some. The most terrifying prospect to me is governments that want to switch to digital IDs. No thanks. I don't need to lose access to existence just because my battery died or I forgot my phone at home.

> I don't like that it is a single point of failure. It has replaced our wallets and then some

I also have a cellular Apple Watch that also has a copy of my digital wallet....

cool story bro. You must be wealthy

And once these devices become required for participation in society, is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them, or are they going to become yet another burden suffered disproportionately by the poor, just like car ownership?

> is the government going to issue free phones and watches to everyone who can't afford them

Yes

https://www.dmas.virginia.gov/media/1252/lifeline-telephone-...

And 94% of the homeless have cell phones. I would assume that the penetration of cell phones among the poor and not homeless would be higher.

https://priceschool.usc.edu/news/homeless-los-angeles-cell-p....

Aren't these preloaded with crap/scamware by shady providers?

No turn it around, you lose the piece of paper saying you have a yearly pass, do you forfeit your right to enter these places?

Maybe, yes. Lose that piece of paper and you forfeit your right to enter that concert...

...but lose that piece of paper and you haven't also forfeited your right to access your hotel room, to catch the plane back home, to pay for your parking space where you left your car, to take public transport, to enter your gym...

[delayed]

In the future, how does one pay to replace a lost device at the store after losing the device that is the exclusive holder of all your payment details, as well as the exclusive holder of all the credentials to all your accounts?