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  • Is the Future going to be Cashless? 🤑

Is the Future going to be Cashless? 🤑

PLUS: Coral Reef Beauty, The Attention Economy, and The Moral Machine ❓️

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  • Is the Future going to be Cashless? 🤑

  • PLUS: Coral Reef Beauty, The Attention Economy, and The Moral Machine ❓️

ECONOMICS

Is the Future going to be Cashless? 🤑

Have you ever walked into a café and been greeted with a sign that says “We are cashless”? For many of us, this is already normal. In fact, cash now makes up just 14% of payments in the UK, and countries like Sweden barely use it at all. So… is cash about to disappear completely?

Donald Duck Money GIF

Can’t use that here, sorry!

💡 Things to consider

  • Who gets left behind?: Not everyone can go digital. Think of elderly people, those in rural areas with poor internet, or the 1.2 million people in the UK without a bank account. Does going cashless risk excluding them from everyday life? In West Africa, around 80% of people work in the informal economy. A sudden switch to cashless systems could disrupt their income, especially for women, who make up a large share of informal workers in countries like India (59%) and Brazil (20%) according to the OECD. Without careful planning, cashless policies could unintentionally push vulnerable groups into deeper poverty.

  • Privacy and control: Every card swipe or phone tap leaves a data trail. In countries like India, digital ID systems such as Aadhaar have linked biometric data to bank accounts, making it easier to deliver benefits but also raising questions about how much governments should know about our finances. Governments and companies could, in theory, track every transaction you make. How much are we willing to trade privacy for convenience?

    Spying Season 5 GIF by The Office
  • When the lights go out: Card readers, online banking, and payment apps all rely on electricity and internet access. Going fully digital could create new vulnerabilities, like restricted access during power outages or cyberattacks. These potential risks underline the importance of backup options when the system goes down. So while a cashless society sounds smooth and modern, it also raises deeper social, political, and economic questions. Whether the “death of cash” is progress or a problem will depend on how we handle those trade-offs.

    I Got This No GIF by DreamWorks Animation

    Now what?

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That’s it for this week! We’d like to thank this week’s writer: Thuy Linh (Leo) Nguyen

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