The Future: Mobile Phones Required for Parking?

The "Mobile (phone) Wallet" trend is big in Japan and elsewhere, and is now making it to the US.  San Francisco, where I live, recently started a pilot program for using your phone to pay for parking meters (San Francisco Sentinel).  The photo here is from Christian Lindholm's blog and shows parking meters in an area of London.  I can certainly see the convenience of this for parking meters, though what about people who don't have a cell phone?  That's a dwindling population, to be sure, especially in Europe, but plenty of people in the US don't want or need them or can't afford them.

Aside from parking, using a phone for payment sounds like more trouble than it's worth.  I'd still have to carry my wallet, so what's the point?

Comments

[Sergey]

You might be interested in watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nHgV5AvJmM (very relevant to the post).

[Kevin]

Sergey, thanks for the pointer. Very amusing.