How the pandemic helped kill off cash
The relationship between the pandemic and the growing use of contactless payment goes back to the early days of Covid, when we still knew very little about how the virus was transmitted, and we mistakenly believed, that this could be done by touching infected surfaces.
That erroneous belief still hasn’t gone away, and many shops, restaurants and other public places still have hydroalcoholic gel, which does nothing to prevent Covid or any other virus, but nevertheless, many of us now see cash as dirty and potentially dangerous.
On top of this, lockdown saw many of us turn to our credit cards in a big way to buy stuff online. At the same time, over recent years, many establishments have come to see cash as a time-consuming hassle, preferring contactless payment, even for small amounts.
The pandemic has been another, perhaps the final, nail in the coffin of a technology, cash, which has been in sharp decline in many countries for some time. In certain parts of the United States, in China and in Sweden, for example, paying in cash prompts strange looks from vendors, and in some places is simply not possible. In Sweden, where only 1% of economic transactions use cash, older and poorer people have hit back, complaining that rapid adoption of contactless payments is making them feel like outcasts.
