The US has checks. Most other nations have mostly (or completely) phased them out for more than 2 decades. Credit cards are just chip carriers now. Mag stripe

The US has checks. Most other nations have mostly (or completely) phased them out for more than 2 decades. Credit cards are just chip carriers now. Mag stripe is being phased out. So either you use the chip connection or use contactless. The cards issued by my bank (Australia) aren't embossed and the mag stripes will probably disappear once the banking 3rd world (US + some of Asia) catches up with the rest of the world. Oh and contactless is literally the same protocol as the contact connections, so "just tapping their phone around" is exactly the same (to the terminal) as "just tapping their card around" or "just inserting their card to read". Government ID could be done in a privacy enhanced way that only provides the requestor attestation of the required information and nothing else. eg * "Is this person that just provided an encrypted and unreadable blob from their ID card over 18?" "Yes". * "Is the person that just provided an encrypted and unreadable blob called John Doe?" "Yes". The government already has all of your identification from birth to death. By (mostly) definition, your identification is what your local government says it is.