I wish Mondex would try again. Mondex was a MasterCard idea tried in the UK that was basically 'digitized cash in a wallet which has the form of a smart card'.
Approach ATM, insert Mondex card. Feed ATM bills and coins, Mondex card gets loaded. Spend card, swipe as normal. Works offline, no connection to a bank account necessary, the money is deducted from your local card's 'account' to the 'account' on the POS/business. Your card records a transaction date/time/merchant for debits, theirs records the same for a credits.
You can transfer funds from one card to another, cash out the card offline at supporting ATMs, be used for building access/RFID cards, hold up to 5 digital wallets on one card, and more.
It was tried in the UK back in the 90s and NYC right in 2000 and worked about as well as you'd imagine in that world. But today, it would probably work much better. HK has the Octopus card which is conceptually similar and works well.
I'd certainly give either a shot so I don't have to carry physical cash but also aren't worried about having my money in someone else's hands who can lose it all due to bank fraud or have IT issues preventing payment processing.
I would guess that the money laundering potential is why it isn't around now - most stores don't let you buy a gift card with another gift card for the same reason (I've implemented this restriction in an e-comm site before). I might be wrong, but that's a potentially big legal hurdle.
Approach ATM, insert Mondex card. Feed ATM bills and coins, Mondex card gets loaded. Spend card, swipe as normal. Works offline, no connection to a bank account necessary, the money is deducted from your local card's 'account' to the 'account' on the POS/business. Your card records a transaction date/time/merchant for debits, theirs records the same for a credits.
You can transfer funds from one card to another, cash out the card offline at supporting ATMs, be used for building access/RFID cards, hold up to 5 digital wallets on one card, and more.
It was tried in the UK back in the 90s and NYC right in 2000 and worked about as well as you'd imagine in that world. But today, it would probably work much better. HK has the Octopus card which is conceptually similar and works well.
I'd certainly give either a shot so I don't have to carry physical cash but also aren't worried about having my money in someone else's hands who can lose it all due to bank fraud or have IT issues preventing payment processing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus_card