What are the implications of a cashless society ?

[SoBoredHelpMe]

ive noticed more and more places are becoming card only and I think it won’t be long (say within 5-10years) that we will become cashless. So I was thinking of positives and negatives and the main negative I see is the lack of privacy as everyone’s spending will be recorded digitally. A major positive though is that it would make it very difficult for e.g. drug dealers to operate ?

would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this …..

Personally I prefer paying by card so that I can see exactly what I've spent, i.e. on the bank statement or transaction history. When I use cash, I tend to forget just where it's all gone as I don't really fancy making a hand written note in a diary every time I buy a coffee! I'm not sure which bank you use where you can't get a list of your transactions very easily.

But you pay for banking cash, plus the time it takes a business to count it, take it to the bank, get change etc. Cashless is cheaper.

I’ll admit I’ve only skimmed the thread but a huge issue I can see is accessibility for elderly or disabled people. About once a month I go out with a carer from an agency to an appt or do a shop or whatever and we’ll usually grab a drink. I have mobility issues and can give them a tenner and wait at the table while they get the drinks and bring me change. Can’t do that card only (bank transfer not an option as it’s a professional relationship and not always the same carer)

It's proven that we spend more when we dont use cash. More again if contactless.

Cashless give someone else the control to turn off our cards. What woul happen if a totalitarian government could turn off the bankcards of someone who objected to the regime. Or n a geographical area, or a group ie women.

Cashless is cheaper

Cashless has a price in terms of privacy and control that a lot of us don't want to pay, thanks.

I love that your first thought in this is the tooth fairy!

I'm almost completely cashless , I don't keep cash in my house really , pocket money goes on DDs card. She can withdraw cash if she wants it's a PITA having to withdraw money from the cash machine for school own clothes day then getting the money swapped for change. I find cash a complete pain.

I don't like the idea of cashless.

The only ones profiting are the banks and their shareholders.

Imagine I have £50 cash. I pay it to my butcher. He uses it to pay his supplier. The supplier used it to pay their farmers. The farmer uses that £50 to pay me for something and I end up spending it with the butcher again. The £50 is always £50 cash.

Now imagine it's cashless. I pay my butcher and the bank takes £1.50 processing fee plus £3 for the butcher's month's card machine charges (costs are examples and not true figures). He pays his supplier via card and the bank takes another £1.50 and they also have to pay their £3 card machine charge. The supplier pays the farmer by card. There goes another £1.50 processing and another £3 card machine facility charge.

That £50 is now £39.50. In a few more transactions it'll be even less until it all belongs to the bank. No longer do banks use our deposited cash for investing and our interest charges for loans to make their money. They take it directly every time we spend what's ours or take a payment owed to us.

Cashless doesn't benefit society anywhere near as much as it benefits bankers.

I agree that it could present a very real problem for elderly and disabled people, and those who live on the margins of society - i.e. no bank accounts. But the last thing I'm worried about is being tracked through my spending. My phone is with me all the time. If any person or government was remotely interested in tracking me, that's how they'd do it.

@fruitbrewhaha

Cashless give someone else the control to turn off our cards. What woul happen if a totalitarian government could turn off the bankcards of someone who objected to the regime. Or n a geographical area, or a group ie women.

But surely unless you were stashing tens of thousands under your bed you wouldn't survive long as 'they' would still have the means to just turn off your access to your account?

@Carsarelife

Agree it would be a bad day for the tooth fairy!

The last time I drew cash out of an ATM was August 2019. I just don’t need it.

I think it's time we moved forward, patient facilities are cash only. On a shift I might have to count 20-30 wallets of money then document it. If a patient wants to go out I give them the allocated amount. If someone has been a patient or social care user for a long time it negatively effects their technology literacy. We are moving towards a more digital world we need to work to with people to be able to use both.

@Anotherturnipforthebooks haha that's because I have DC of that age that seem to be losing teeth faster than the wind turns, so that's at the forefront of my mind - whether I have cash in the house

I’ll admit I’ve only skimmed the thread but a huge issue I can see is accessibility for elderly or disabled people.

Several less able people I know have been liberated by dumping cash. Starting with not being mugged for their DLA collecting it from the post office, and ending with just tap'n'going rather than fiddling through a palmful of shrapnel with fucked vision and unsteady hands.

I'm very against a cashless society and almost always pay in cash, but you could pay by the same method in practice with card at the moment. Maybe in a fully cashless society they'd also want to implement fingerprint recognition as confirmation or something. Currently when paying card you're largely not even able to insert the card and input your PIN, they just expect you to tap the card (often in such a way that you can't see the terminal and what you're being charged, but that's another issue!). Even with PIN, you can/could use other people's cards (I appreciate that in your looser contact situation, you might not tell the carer); they don't check the name on the card against ID. In the past, I've paid (with permission) with bank cards belonging to various relatives, either in similar situations as yours, them sending me out for things, or in one case, because we were in a non-EU foreign country and my card was likely not to be accepted.

I agree that bank transfer would be a faff for this and much inferior to cash, but it would be a possible option in terms of mechanisms. Just an unnecessary extra step with account details when it would be much simpler to just hand some cash over.

We just spent five days in Norway and didn't spend a single penny of cash. Even the airport bus and the guy on the hotdog stall was card only. It was very odd.

But the last thing I'm worried about is being tracked through my spending. My phone is with me all the time. If any person or government was remotely interested in tracking me, that's how they'd do it

Crucially, that's your choice; in that, you're aware someone might use your phone and spending to track you and are presumably OK with that. Some people might not want to be tracked via their spending, and they don't need to have nefarious reasons for hiding it apart from just wanting their privacy. That's their choice. Cashless would give the ability to monitor spending and there'd be no choice about it. That's what makes a lot of people very uneasy about cashless.

That's fine, but ultimately your choices are going to be ever more limited as to where you buy things as more and more places stop accepting cash, and maybe even using cash will become more expensive as the business increases prices to cover their additional cash handling costs - we may see differential pricing with a lower price for card payments.

We got around 500 euros a few years ago for European holidays. We keep taking it and keep bringing most of it back. Most places accept card and lots of places are card only (just like the UK). We must have around 400 Euros left, and that's after 4 or 5 holidays, so maybe we spend around 20 Euros per holiday in cash, probably just renting sunbeds for the day as I can't really think of anything else where cash is the only payment method.

@Precipice

Currently when paying card you're largely not even able to insert the card and input your PIN, they just expect you to tap the card (often in such a way that you can't see the terminal and what you're being charged, but that's another issue!)

Just tell them your card isn't contactless and they'll hand the machine to you to enter your pin.

Agreed, I sincerely doubt a cashless society will happen, be it in my lifetime, or ever.

I would only give in to concern and start to seriously think there is a real possibility for going cashless is if a country, any country, anywhere in the world, stops printing money and takes cash out of their economy entirely.

I think the whole thing is unworkable.

Same with my MIL who has dementia. She went through shed loads of cash buying very little. Heaven knows what she spent in on, or whether she hid it or lost it. We got her set up with a debit card account into which we set up a standing order from her main account, so it's basically "topped up" with spending money. We can access it via an app on DH's phone, so he gets a "ping" when she spends money. It took a bit of persistence to get her to use it but now she's forgotten about cash and never uses it at all. It's good to be able to see what's she's spent money on so we can check she's not being scammed or taken advantage of.

You need several accounts in case one goes down or one gets scammed, you can't just rely on one bank account which is problematic if you haven't easy access to credit cards or don't have much money

With the introduction of digital currency it CAN be programmable to the point that the currency can be made to expire, so forcing you to use it up by a certain date. Implications being it can potentially prevent people from building up savings.

That in itself is pretty worrying.

It's fine if you have plenty of money as it doesn't matter when Tesco ringfences £120 for the automated petrol pump that you may not get back for a few days or the card you use in the supermarket doesn't work for whatever reason as you can just use another card but if you are skint £20 in the pocket is a lot more reliable.

Meanwhile, on planet earth, banknotes are regularly retired, and people holding large amounts of "expired" one need to explain to the bank where they came from.

Digital currencies are interesting because they can be configured to be worth different amounts to different people. It was something the cryptobros were unduly fascinated with when BitCoin was fashionable. I only ever met two sorts of non-tech people at blockchain conferences. Lawyers and scamsters. Says it all really.