A cashless Society

The old analogy of “Cash is King” is slowly but surely loosing traction in modern society. The convenience factor plays a massive role in this assumption. The ease of just whipping out your credit card and swiping it for whatever you want is just too much of a lure for the average citizen. As the major advantage of a cashless society is the convenience of daily transactions, the biggest winner is of course the “Banks” as they benefit from charging additional fees with every swipe and another important factor is the paper trail that your card leaves behind after the transaction is long completed. Merchants and advertisers then use that information to entice you into more buying and they might even be kind enough to offer various reward points for every time you swipe your card.  How Kind! Another point of difference between cash and card is the psychological difference, cash forces you to consider your purchases, as your wallet will be feeling the pinch whereas card purchases removes the mental obstacle of how much money is leaving your possession as you are not physically seeing the reduction of money in your account.

Too many people spend money they do not have, to buy things they do not want and to impress people they do not like.

Some countries have already made massive shifts to a cashless society, no more so than Sweden. Cash is now used in less than one in five of all purchase transactions in stores in Sweden, the country has banned notes and coins on buses, many tourist attractions take plastic-only transactions. Without cash, people become purely dependent on big banks, the lack of genuine cash shifts the power from individual to banks and government authorities. The ultimate risk of a cashless society is that too many people spend money they do not have, to buy things they do not want and to impress people they do not like. The question I will leave you with is who is “King without cash”?