The endless digs in the trousers’ pockets to the grueling search for two coins for the coffee; the embarrassing approach to a stranger or colleague to ask for a loan: "is it on you today? It will be on me tomorrow; all the good habits that to together the long pauses in front of the coffee machines since time immemorial seem destined to change, to evolve, just as digital payment instruments are evolving.

Today it is indeed possible to pay for a coffee without using any money, but by using contactless cards or smartphones, through some of the numerous apps that are invading our daily lives.

After the boom with metro tickets, which can be paid with a credit card in Milan and Rome by making it slide on the appropriate turnstile, digital payments spread like wildfire inside our routine, silently ripping cash space. Therefore, coffee, snacks, coin-operated laundries, even fruit on the market, can be bought without the use of old banknotes.

In Italy, 84% of the vending machines allows you to pay with cashless mode (via key, card, or smartphone app), a number that is set to grow considering the speed with which electronic payment instruments are increasingly getting appreciated by consumers.

Comfort seems to have become the essential synonym of this millennium, a place where the space for the noisy coins is slowly being replaced by the screens of a smartphone or the rapid sliding of a contactless card. The rituals are therefore destined to change, although a few coins, out of habit and fidelity, we will continue to take it with us, probably lost in some pocket.