A World Without Cash: The Future of Money
Our world is growing increasingly digital. David Wolman, author of ‘The End of Money’ and contributing editor at Wired, believes that the most impactful contribution from the invention of the smartphone is the applications that transform the device into a seamless wallet, remittance, and payments tool, granting financial inclusion and unprecedented convenience to billions of unbanked people around the world.
While paper money has helped the world exchange value for goods and services for approximately the past millennium, it’s time the money system updated itself to satisfy today’s needs. The case against cash is clear.
Cash for crime
Cash is the preferred mode of payment for individuals and organisations conducting illicit activities. Peter Sands, Harvard president emeritus and a senior fellow at the university’s Kennedy School of Government, believes that cash provides an untraceable means to facilitate and fuel the criminal economy. “No other payment mechanism simultaneously provides anonymity for payor and payee, leaves no trace of transactions, and is so widely accepted.” Without physical cash, large-scale criminal activity would be much easier to detect: transactions will have to bypass bank accounts, which are traceable. They may even resort to a more troublesome form of barter trading.
