Your wallet will be obsolete by 2015: PayPal

Internet money transfer company PayPal has just hit its 100 million active accounts milestone, and with it, the company is predicting that mobile payments will supersede physical wallets in the not too distant future.

"Consumers are increasingly giving up traditional payment methods such as cash and checks and turning to a more modern - and anytime, anywhere - form of payment," said PayPal president Scott Thompson in a June 29 post on the company's blog.

"We believe that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. - from your local corner store to Walmart. We will no longer need to carry a wallet," he added.

The company is so sure about its no-cash prediction, it is asking five of its San Francisco Bay area employees to "use only digital currencies to pay for all their purchases" in a pseudo-competition (read viral marketing stunt) that will be announced on July 11.

A Canadian study conducted by Leger Marketing on behalf of PayPal and released on June 28 found that more than half of Canadians are comfortable with a cashless society.

During an opening keynote at the GSMA Mobile Money Summit in Singapore, Visa's head of mobile innovation, Bill Gajda, announced Visa's vision to convert mobile devices into "true digital wallets" adding that "we're at the dawn of the next generation of mobile money - maybe 'mobile money 2.0.' As an industry we've moved past what software we're going to buy and can now talk about what we're going to do."