Payment through smartphones to be mainstream by 2020:

Using smartphones as digital "wallets" will be common within a decade, largely replacing cash and credit cards, 

Sixty-five percent of "technology stakeholders and critics" who responded to an opt-in poll by Pew Research and Elon University Imagining the Internet Center agreed that handheld gadgets would be a mainstream way to pay by the year 2020.

"What is in your wallet now? Identification, payment, and personal items," he continued. "All this will easily fit in your mobile device and will inevitably do so."

Some who were optimistic about the future of smartphone wallets expected the trend to be slowed by privacy fears, lack of infrastructure, and resistance by credit card companies and other entities profiting on the current system.