According to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 43% of American adults have purchased goods through a full week without the use of cash or coins. Only slightly more (47%) have not done so.
BBC Radio’s Business Daily looks at the cashless society. A cashless world may be more efficient, and cheaper for governments but does it make us more vulnerable to electronic fraud?
CBS News reports that Sweden is moving toward a cashless economy.
Bloomberg’s article Visions of a Cashless Society: Echoes puts the issue in historical context.
And in his Washington Post commentary, “Don’t show me the money: Why eliminating cash may be the secret to prosperity,” Dominic Basulto casts a positive opinion:
In countries that have been early to embrace the cashless society, such as the emerging nations of sub-Saharan Africa, the movement has unlocked the extraordinary economic potential of their citizens. This is borne out not just anecdotally, but also through reports from international aid organizations. As the Financial Times points out, innovations such as Kenya’s M-Pesa have actually led to the empowerment of society’s poorest members for one simple reason: In today’s mobile world, it’s much easier to get someone to use a cellphone than it is to get someone to open a bank account. The Financial Times goes on to report that, in Kenya, 15 million people use M-Pesa, resulting in over $8 billion in transactions that never would have occurred otherwise.
Although he does admit, “A cashless society is also a society where there is no longer any anonymity.”
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