It was a member of the Salvation Army walking around the pub rattling his tin.

Now there's no better cause than the Salvos and for a minute I felt shame as I realised the only form of currency I had on me was my phone.

After constantly losing my bank debit card, I made the move a couple of years ago to do all my money transactions by phone.

This of course meant that as the Salvos man walked towards me, I had no coins to slot into his tin.

But my guilt was soon overtaken by surprise when upon explaining my lack of coins, our Salvos man just smiled and pulled out a pay square.

So here it was, my confirmation that not only was cash no longer king, it was indeed now just a lowly peasant.

Given my conversion to the phone tap, I should not have been as shocked as I was with the Salvo man's ingenuity and embrace of technology.

But as a child of the 1970s and 1980s, the change from how money looks, how it's used and accessed has been a quantum leap.

Back in the day it was all about coins and paper money.

It was the time when your weekly wage actually came in the form of a pay packet.

The pay man would come around, you'd line up and be handed your envelope.

And there it was, the reward for a week of work right there in your hands.

The disciplined took it straight home, divided it into the weekly costs and went back to work and started towards the next pay packet.

The young and undisciplined had the money quickly burn a hole in the pay packet, with a few beers and a bit of a flutter on pay day a temptation too strong to resist.

But while there was some uncontrolled spending, it could be argued that cash in the hand (or wallet) was the perfect way to learn how to handle your money.

When you brought a beer, a cake, a car, a pair of jeans, it was done by handing over your cash.

Once done, you then had the hole in your wallet or pocket left behind - it was an immediate look at what your actions had created.

It was also a time when banks were the most important business institution, not just for holding your money, but for customer service.

To make a payment on your house or car, you went into the bank - when you wanted to deposit or withdraw cash, we did it with the teller.

And if it wasn't cash you were dealing with, it was cheques.

Then there was going away on holidays. Travelling around Europe now only requires a card in your pocket, or your phone.

Back then, it was a bum bag clinging to your waist, with a combination of cash and traveller cheques inside.

It was keep your wits about you or go home poor.

For lovers of physical money, the 1980s was a time of great change.

The one and two dollar notes were replaced by coins.

The 1990s saw a transformation in our bills, with the paper notes of $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, all being re-issued in polymer/plastic material.

While this was exciting, there were also some teething problems.

The early days saw the faces on new $5 and $10 being able to be rubbed out by using a coin.

This led to more faceless Queen Elizabeth's on notes than not.

But by this time, the revolution had started.

The ATM first become commonplace in Australia from the early 1980s.

But they were still used sparingly, with most people drawing directly from their pay packet cash to fund their week's activities.

But the seed had been planted and the trickle to the ATM's soon became a rush, as more and more people became reliant on sourcing their money through them.

When they went down with a fault, which was common in the early days, it was chaos.

And who could forgot the panic to get money out when the Telstra fire brought Warrnambool to its knees in 2012.

But debit cards were soon being used for more than just drawing out money.

Businesses were now embracing the technology and using your card through an EFTPOS machine to pay for purchases was soon hugely popular.

The lid was now off and the advancements carried on unabated, to the phone-tapping-pay-everything-online society we now know.