I didn't suggest anything or say forced but I think they will be forced in the way you won't even be able to start your car without them in the future. But I was talking about the future. Smartphones can already do what an ID does as well as things a credit card does and most other things you would have in your wallet like house keys. Eventually it will take over out of convinience but not for decades.
In the near future I think you will be able to use it as a substitute for an ID in the same way you can use a credit card alongside cash.
So will we all get phones for free then? I think the above misses a lot of realities:
1 - Unless the government is going to give phones with contracts to make them work for free then you run up against the same argument as the passport and Driving licence. You are forcing people to pay for something and while a lot of people might not believe it there are vast swathes of the country that do not want nor will have a phone.
2 - Commerce will never turn sales down. They aren't going to insist on cash being eradicated if it means losing sales.
3 - A lot of people with phones do not trust them and will never use them as they would a debit card. I know lots of people love "swiping" their phones at the news agent or to buy stuff but I know a lot more that would never ever trust that. Lots of people don;t even trust their debit card and draw their money out then pay in cash. I do for one but that is because cash withdrawals show on my online account straight away whereas as DD transactions can take 2-3 days. Much easier for me to budget when I can see (on my laptop when I get home) what my current account looks like rather than have to tally a load of receipts up.
I think a lot of people just do not realise that these things are unworkable. Will they be retrofitting classic cars with this device to start it? Car manufacturers will never move to something like that if it loses them sales. You will get certain manufacturers that use it as a plus point for them "you don;t need a phone to start our cars."
If you think people are just going to trust their phones to lock their house, start their car, pay for stuff then I'm afraid you are wrong because there will always be a large enough section of society that won't buy a phone or not use a phone for these things that the market will not be able to just ignore it.
Like I said earlier. A few years ago I was going to finish with my contract. My wife insisted I needed it because of the kids!!! i.e. getting in contact with each other if something arises. So I continued on the cheapest contract. However I don;t use the phone, rarely take it with me when I go out and eventually I will get rid of it.
Meanwhile the Jetson demographic thinks that in the future everybody will be clones.
It isn't about convenience. It is about trust. A lot of people do not trust these processes. Not in the same way that some don;t trust banks so don't have an account but they do not trust the whole "data" part of this. No-one can see what I am spending my money on, just that I draw it out of the cashpoint. No GPS tracking my every move all day long, tracing my steps, noting which shops I go in, which ones I don't spend anything and which ones I do, what I buy.
No worry that the system took my money twice.....or that some fraud has now managed to take money out because I accessed their dodgy system. These habits and fears won;t just die out in decades. If they do there will be more bitcoins and in a real physcial money sense to replace the money that used to be there. And commerce will then have to accept it because they do not want to turn business away.
It is fantasy to think that it will ever happen. Definitely not in my lifetime even if I live to be 100 (another 57 years.) More likely that money is rendered obsolete entirely not just physically with everybody being in an electronically controlled socialist setup where money is not required at all.