PayPal president says we won’t need wallets by 2015

In a blog post that announced PayPal now has 100 million active accounts, PayPal president Scott Thompson also discussed the future of the mobile payment space. “We believe that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. – from your local corner store to Walmart,” Thompson said. “We will no longer need to carry a wallet.” As part of that goal, the company has asked five residents in the San Francisco Bay area to use digital currency for all of their purchases and, presumably, PayPal will pick up the tab. While we love Thompson’s optimism, that sounds like a tough task. Google recently announced its Google Wallet application, which will allow customers to use a Nexus S smartphone to purchase goods at a number of retailers, but you’d still be hard pressed to find anywhere that accepts it as payment for the time being. We suppose they could use a PayPal debit card — but that would still require a wallet. Oh well, there’s always Starbucks.

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