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I'd love to see a digital option not tied to identities, but I think that is never going to happen due to the KYC (know your customer) laws in place. I hate bring cryptocurrency into this, but even with "distributed" currencies, we are seeing KYC laws preventing true, anonymous payments (like Monero not accepted at large exchanges).

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IC cards in Japan, like Pasmo and Suica, kind of work like this: originally intended for transit passes but also accepted at lots of retailers, usually for smaller purchases. You buy a card and load it with cash at a machine, no KYC required. It's really convenient and I'd happily use such a system in daily life in the West.

In theory correlating the card purchase with location or camera data would be possible, but even that's a win as it moves transaction surveillance from dragnet to bespoke.

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