The war on cash: National Banks Strike Back

Last week I blogged about contactless cards. The title started with “The war on cash”. This confused quite some readers, according to the comments when discussing my blog of last week.

Interesting stuff, and good inspiration for a new blog. My new post will be dig deeps in these comments and concerns on the increasing digitization of payments. What is the impact of a cashless society? Why is this still a controversial topic for some?

When combining ‘contactless’ and ‘The Netherlands’, many readers recalled the fear of a cashless society, triggered by a communication of the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) earlier this year. That led to a whole discussion on Reddit, in a completely other direction than the discussion of DNB.

DNB is concerned about the decline in the use of cash because the light-speed evolution of digital risks to generate a new kind of financial exclusion. Exclusion of the digilliterate: people who (I) have no or limited access to digital services one way or another, or (II) do not understand how to work with it, (III) cyberphobics.

Yes, there are still people that do not understand how to work with digital services. These people are locked out of regular daily life every time they see: