The oldest coins ever discovered are estimated to be over 3,000 years old. And, long before these were ever struck, civilizations were using other physical objects including plants and animals to trade with each other.

But it can’t have escaped most people’s attention that physical cash is hardly ever the way that we pay for anything today. The coming together of three powerful sectors, telecoms, banking, and retail, have seen to that. So some people are now predicting that cash is no longer king – and soon it may be nothing at all.

After all, with technology advancing at an ever-increasing pace, it seems that the world is also becoming more and more connected in countless ways. So even the times when you currently need to pay with cash are becoming fewer and fewer. Even buskers are organizing themselves to get card reading machines to replace the traditional hat or empty guitar case. And if that doesn’t perfectly illustrate the seismic change that’s taking place, it’s hard to say what does.

While there is always a great deal said and written about how cryptocurrency will herald the cashless future, the jury is still pretty much out on this one. But, beyond the increasing use of card payments, it’s certainly true that digital wallets are the one area that has exploded far beyond what the inventors of PayPal ever imagined.

This has been driven by a few sectors, in particular, including many that rely on fast transactions like the New York City mass transit system and others whose customers want speed and security, such as online casinos.

The latter has been particularly keen to be early adopters of an ever-widening selection of payment systems. A typical example of this is a new way to deposit funds quickly and securely called POLi. The casinos who are now using this system make themselves even more appealing to potential players thanks to generous welcome bonuses – you can read a complete analysis by Josh Lang here. This will explain the ins and outs of using POLi as well as give a list of online casinos that welcome it.

It’s also worth taking a quick look at the benefits that going cashless will mean beyond it simply being more convenient. The most obvious is security. By its physical nature, cash can be lost or stolen, with no real chance of tracing it once it’s gone. There’s also a very clear advantage to government treasuries and that’s the sheer cost of printing notes and striking coins every year, as these figures from The Federal Reserve only go to show. Plus, it’s bulky to carry around, especially when all you need to have on you now to pay for almost anything is your cellphone.

Of course, there are other issues to be addressed such as making cashless payments as safe as they possibly can. But another tech like biometric facial recognition is always improving this too.

So, when it comes to the question of whether the end of cash is in sight, the clever money probably says that it is.