Open your wallet right now and take a look at how much cash you have. If you’re like most Americans, the number of dead presidents staring back at you is minimal. With the alternatives to currency growing in convenience and privacy, the question of a cashless society is real. Aside from the obvious factors of credit and debit cards, what kinds of recent developments have decreased our reliance on cash, and what can we expect in the near future?

• From Coins to Credit Cards: If you’ve ever brought your spare change into the supermarket and poured it into one of those tall green machines for cash, you might enjoy this one. One day soon you’ll be able to drop your coins in and receive prepaid MasterCards and phone cards. The average U.S. household has between $30 and $50 in coins, so this could prove very useful.

• Fast Gas: Nowadays, most people swipe their credit or gas card into pumps to get a little fuel. Although this transaction takes only a few seconds, Mobil and Exxon figured out a way to make it even faster. Mobil Speedpass customers don’t even have to open their wallet, they simply wave the ticket on their key chain in front of the pump and the amount is automatically billed to their account.

• Burgers and Fries: You can already get your daily fast food fix without cash at some joints that accept debit cards, but now McDonalds has actually signed on to use Mobil’s Speedpass system for their walk-up and drive through customers.

• Smart Cards: Pre-paid vouchers such as InternetCash and Smart Cards have revolutionized the way we shop at the malls and online. Anyone wishing to change paper money into cybercash can buy one of these cards in set denominations and use it as a credit card until the balance is used up.

• Virtual Pocket Money: Many teens want to e-shop these days and paper money is of little or no use to them. Virtual Pocket Money and other parent-controlled debit cards like Visa Buxx and MasterCard’s Ecount are re-usable cards parents can fill with a child’s allowance and even monitor what sites they are spending on.

• Virtual Cards: Even the replacement for paper money is being replaced. Virtual credit cards are now being offered by nearly all major lenders including MasterCard and Discover. This is a graphic image of a credit card that resides on the consumer’s desktop. The “virtual card” is identical to the user’s physical card but no card numbers are displayed and a secret PIN number must be entered for transaction approval. This system thus minimizes the opportunities for credit theft.

• Pay by Phone: Although mostly still in the testing phase, some countries have already employed this merge of the top two technological toys of the millennium: The mobile phone and the Internet. In Japan for example, consumers can walk up to a vending machine, type a few numbers into their wireless phones, and a soda will pop out. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), WIRCA, and Bluetooth are leading companies in this “mobil-commerce” boom and will eventually provide consumers with pay-by-phone options in restaurants, retail stores, and vending machines.

• Web-linked ATMs: In the very near future, consumers will be able to go to the ATM at a local convenience store and check out vacation spots online, book a flight, buy tickets to a rock concert, and pay their electric bill. These “Financial Service Kiosks” will offer everything from check cashing and electronic bill payment to prepaid phone cards and event ticketing. They will be available throughout the country by the end of 2001.