Just imagine living in a world where you wouldn’t need to lift a finger… or, for that matter, use any money to pay for your bills, make your shopping or instantly transfer funds to a friend in distress. Yet again… it’s happening as we speak everywhere we turn our eyes to, from the almost cash-free, very Nordic Sweden to the M-Pesa-addicted Kenya.

In the blink of an eye – considering that money has been part of our history for thousands of years – financial institutions (go figure!) and technology have made the everyday life without it possible.

Started in the banking system along with the issuance of the first card and refined by mobile-payment technologies, the exile of money from our lives, symbolic in reality, has almost become real in our perception. As a result, the change in our decision-making behaviour as consumers is undeniable: we spend more when we have no (physical) money – either by using our cards or our mobile phones.

Technology nurtures our need to have everything at our fingertips… literally. Cristi MIHAI, Managing Partner, STRATEGAD.

On the other hand, since we no longer have access only to what we need, but also to what we desire, we learned to choose experience over ownership and regard money no longer as a purpose, but a means to an end. And so, we have come to buy ourselves opportunities. And the time we need to enjoy them.

A phenomenon still in its infancy, at the same time the logical next step for our society, as some might put it, the disappearance of money from our pockets (and minds) is a high probability, however difficult to accept now. Because the truth is, the promise of having a taste of everything there is to know, however costly in the end, is too powerful to ignore.