Cashless in Japan

Japan is a cash society. It is slowly moving away from this, but it is still predominantly run on cash.
One of the reasons for this is the tax system. Like in France, small businesses prefer to receive cash so they don't have to log a purchase and therefore don't have to pay taxes. Almost all Japanese businesses run a loss every year to get out of paying taxes, and many salaried workers have a small business on the side, such as rice farming, in order to report a loss and get their taxes reduced on their regular salary.
It's not all about tax evasion, however. Now the problem is the lack of a coherent cashless system. It's not that there are no options in Japan for paying without cash, it's that there are too many.
Many stores and petrol stations have their own cards. You load the card with cash and then just use it for that- but they are never unified, so you end up with dozens of cards. The way the company makes a profit from this is those tiny balances you just can't use up, similar to North American gift cards. I just counted up the cards I have in my wallet (5) and the balances- and I have 7230 yen just waiting unused in my wallet. I am going to use that up over the next month, come hell or high water.
The good thing about some of these cards are their rewards. I've gotten free elecronics from BicCamera using this system, and a lot of batteries. The best for me, however, is Jusco's Waon card, with which I collect JAL airmiles. Between this and excessive use of my JAL credit card, I earned a free domestic flight last year and a free overseas flight this summer. My husband has enough on his card for a flight to Asia, and I hope we can take advantage of the recent 2-for-1 JAL mileage campaign to have a long weekend in Shanghai or Phuket this autumn.
My parents were highly amused with my ability to pay for things with my mobile phone when they visited. This has the potential to be very convenient, but for some reason it's been mucked up. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia page about the "mobile phone wallet" lists 37(!) different systems for paying with your mobile. You have to sign up for each. If you lose your mobile, you have to contact each company to cancel each system as well. This means it's actually a gigantic pain in the rear. What happened to the good old monopoly? I think Japan needs Bill Gates to come over and reform the cashless system.
Today I read about the ability to send money to someone's bank account using their mobile number. This sounds great, a very Japanese take on Paypal (which cannot yet be linked to Japanese bank accounts, although that might be coming in 2010 or 2011). It also helps with privacy issues and with avoiding having to go to the bank or ATM during the short hours they are open. I hope this doesn't get mucked up as well. I can just imagine that you could only send to someone on the same service provider as your mobile phone or something else ridiculous.