If you think that having to pull out your wallet is slightly onerous, a little birdie told me that a raft of new measures are coming shortly for checking of carry-on baggage.
You won't notice what they are doing as you pass through, but the back-end systems to support this initiative will be very complex and are still under development.
I sincerely hope we are all safer as a result as I sometimes get the feeling that the current scanners aren't infallible. The checked baggage scanning is also quite a complex system and very efficient as I've never seen it hold up a flight.