PayPal has announced that it now has more than 100 million active accounts. That means 100 million people around the world trust the company with their digital wallets.
PayPal believes that consumers are increasingly giving up traditional payment methods such as cash and checks and turning to a more modern form of payment. As the trend toward digital currency continues to gain momentum, PayPal wants to deliver solutions than are better than what is currently the norm today.
In fact, the company predicts that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the US - from your local corner store to Walmart. In other words, PayPal thinks that in four years you will no longer need to carry a wallet.
PayPal is so confident that this goal can be achieved that it has asked five of its Bay area employees to embrace a digital lifestyle and use only digital currency to pay for all of their purchases. The company will then likely try to learn from their findings and experiences.
I would love to be able to get rid of my wallet in the next few years: it's bulky and annoying to carry around. I see it as a necessity though, and if PayPal or some other company can change that for me, I would not complain.
I don't believe that can happen by 2015 though. There is simply way too much infrastructure that depends on the current model, and businesses do not want that to go to waste. While the gain for consumers is worth the effort, the same cannot be said for companies on the other end of the equation.