PDAs as alternatives to smart cards?

[Steve Schear]

With the widespread adoption of an industry standard IR link between PDA
type devices, networks and PCs might this not present an opportunity for
their use as more user-configurable and application agile financial and
communiation privacy instruments?  I'm especially thinking along the lines
of their use for ecash transactions in conjunction with smart card-type
merchant terminals sporting an inexpensive IR link to the customer's PDA.

If disk protection programs (e.g., DiskCrypt/PGPDisk) were extended to PDAs
ight that not enable them for a whole host of personal applications?

--Steve