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The name "cash 2.0" is glued to contactless payment cards more and more strongly. On the one hand, there are grounds for such a term, as small cash payments are more often replaced by the delivery of a smart card or mobile phone with an RFID chip to the reader window in a transport turnstile, vending machine or a cashier’s store terminal. But on the other hand, such a substitution of concepts is not entirely correct, since the most important properties of cash — anonymity and non-traceability of payments — are not provided for in the now widely implemented contactless payment systems. For the so-called "cash 2.0", on closer inspection, does not differ in principle from ordinary credit or debit cards that are tightly tied to specific people and their bank accounts.
From a commercial point of view, there is no need to link payment smart cards to its owner. But from the point of view of security, according to many independent experts, contactless payment cards based on RFID chips not only carry a heavy legacy of badly protected magnetic stripe credit cards, but also generate a lot of new problems. However, the card payment industry, vigorously promoting a new technology, strongly disagrees with such views and tries to convince people of the opposite - that the contactless system is safer than the traditional one. So who is right in this dispute?

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a method of remotely storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. An RFID tag is a small object that can be associated or combined with a product, person, animal. RFID tags contain antennas that allow them to receive and send a radio frequency identification signal requested from an RFID transceiver. Passive tags do not need an internal power source, whereas active tags need it.

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It is believed that the first known device was a tool for espionage and was invented by Lev Teremin for the Soviet government in 1945. Theremin's device was an eavesdropping device, not an identification tag. The technology used in RFID was in use in the early 1920s (according to one source, although the same source claims that RFID systems appeared only in the late 60s.). A similar technology, the IFF pulse transceiver, was invented by the British in 1939 and was commonly used by allies in World War II to identify aircraft in the friend-foe system. Another early work on RFID research is the significant work of Harry Stockman, entitled "Communication by Means of Reflected Power" (October 1948). However, it took another 13 years of significant progress in many areas before RFID technology became a reality.

RFID tags placed on the sidewalks of Italy help blind people to move around in unfamiliar places. This project is carried out as part of a research project funded by the European Union called the SESAMONET (Secure and Safe Mobility Network), which aims to improve the lives of visually impaired people.

In the city of Laveno Mombello, the project developers created a path of about 2 km long RFID tags that leads from the city’s railway station to Lago Maggiore Bank, loop in a park near the lake, and also pass through several intersections. About 10 people, with poor or absent eyesight, test the system using specially designed canes, which act as readers for 125 kHz passive Tags, in ceramic cases that are buried in tracks. Thanks to these tests, developers get the necessary information to improve the system.

When a blind person approaches the tag, his cane recognizes it (the reader’s antenna is built into the cane’s tip, the power source and the Bluetooth transmitter are integrated near the handle). Unique ID Tag is sent, via a Bluetooth transmitter, to the user's PDA, in which a special program is running that determines a person’s location. The program quickly sets the direction (with the help of voice commands of the program), or various sound signals, which are then transmitted to wireless headphones dressed as a tester.