>>>>There's a level of transaction which is below the small business but still larger than a few pence.
>>
>>Some phone providers already allow you to pay such fees by sending a txt to a designated phone number- e.g. it's already commonly available to pay for parking in some places. Smarter mobile payment options are due within a year.
>
>The parking-via-SMS is commonplace in Belgrade since 2002 or 2003. There may be other services I'm not aware of, because I don't have a cell phone yet (and probably don't need it at all).

This still misses the point thats there's a groups of people and transactions for which cheques worked very well and there's not a clear replacement.

A lot of these electronic payment systems aren't all they are cracked up to be. In London now we have Oyster cards for the underground. The can be used to get into the system by putting them on a reader.

Its very easy to get overcharged. For instance if you enter the system and give up waiting for a train and leave at the same station the system will assume a fraud and charge you the maximum daily fare (its ok if you're only wait a few minutes but kicks in after about 12 minutes). Its very easy not to realise this has happened so you have effectively lost money. If you do realise then you have to go through a long process to get the credit back.