What does the future of electronic payments hold?

I've been looking at electronic payments recently. Visa and mastercard charge merchants on the order of 2.5 ~ 3$ for a transaction. Why should there be a cost related to using cash? The concept seems silly when compared to using coins and paper (plastic?) when making transactions.

I took a look at some online payment processing systems instead to see the associated costs related to using online payment systems and came down to the following summary based on a cursory search:

Company	Fee	Transaction	Fx Fee	Comment
Stripe	2.90%	0.3		On Send
Paypal	2.90%	0.3	2.50%	From Credit card only and in US
Skrill	1.90%			Capped at 20 euros
Alipay	0.7 ~ 1.2%			Chinese accounts
Alipay	2.5 ~ 2.5%			Foreign accounts
Wepay	2.90%	0.3
2Checkout	2.90%	0.3		More for other countries

What has surprised me is that most online payment platforms do no better compared to the standard Visa and Mastercard transaction rates. The only companies that seem to be offering better deals to consumers are Chinese payment systems for Chinese users with far lower rates.

I would surmise that the increase in usage is the result of the lower transaction fees.

Of the online payment providers, their businesses seem to be solely based on transactions instead of providing any sort of banking functions. I am quite certain that there are costs related to transferring money in and out of these payment processing systems and banks adding into the operational costs of these online payment processing systems.

Another interesting surprise is the lack of integration of online payment systems with banks which could make storage of money versus the spending of it far more frictionless.

I see some interesting things in the future, one for the fact that Sweden and other Nordic countries are moving towards cashless payment systems. I think the next step in this process would be for governments to legislate and create infrastructure for this to happen. Once this does happen, I believe it would be the biggest competitive killer in the current payment processing environment.