Karl's prediction of future money transactions

I was in a lineup at a bank machine the other day, waiting to deposit a cheque, when I had an epiphany. Some day, cheques are going to have sophisticated 3 dimensional bar codes printed on them. If anyone sends you a cheque, all you'll have to do is take a picture of the bar code with your cell phone camera, then send the photo to your bank web site as a feature of online banking. The money will be instantly deposited in your account and you get to keep the cheque as a receipt. The bar code will be generated by a bank web site - in other words all cheques will be printed from your home printer.

That will be cool.

That's assuming we still have cheques. We'll probably use cell phones to transfer money to each other, just like in some places you can already pay for stuff (like in vending machines) with your cell phone.