Is it that shocking? I can count the number of times I used cash in the last 2 years on one hand thanks to covid. Everywhere that was a hold-out was forced adopt the "tap" cards. By the time I have kids and they grow up enough to start having an allowance will be 10 years from now and I don't think we'll be using cash more than now. The people making these apps obviously see that trend too.

We kept a ledger on the fridge where we credited my allowance and debited my purchases on my mom’s credit card.

I didn’t have a smartphone but I could text. Around 14 I wrote a little Rails app that would receive transactions via SMS from Twilio. We never ended up using it but it was fun to write. Shortly after that I got a joint checking account with a debit card in my name.

Not surprised at all.

I'm guessing you aren't a parent. How else can they buy those Fortnite skins? Robux? Minecoins?