Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait

I live in Japan but I don't use it. It would save me about 5 seconds on each my infrequent non-internet transactions, and that's about it.

The pre-paid debit card function (shown in the left pic in the article) is more useful, though. Because you can use it for small payments, you don't have to be carrying lots of coins all the time. And in some places there are exclusive cashiers for these debit-cards so you can check-out much faster.

Yep, but we're still fundamentally a cash-based society. Granted, the cell phone is easier to pay with than a credit card: most times when I swipe a CC at a restaurant with an average per-person price of less than $15 I have to wait 5 minutes while the cashier finds someone who knows how to do it.

The e-wallet cell phones are mostly used for convenience stores, which are sort of like what an American convenience store would look like if Bezos was running them. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you. Let's start with "If you work all day getting packages delivered is sort of annoying because the local equivalent of FedEx might show up before you're home, so instead just ship them to your local convenience store which is open 24 hours, which will happily hold them in your name until it is convenient for you to pick it up. Oh, did you need to pay for it, too? No problem, the convenience store can process payments for any Internet company worth their salt, generally pre-shipping but at-delivery for some products. Oh, haven't paid your taxes yet? Maybe you need to stop by the convenience store! We can also handle water, power, Internet, cell phone, etc etc. And if financial services make you thirsty, perhaps our selection of 760 different brands of liquid refreshment has something you'll enjoy."