Killing cash: Are we ready to pull the trigger?

Meanwhile on an Indonesian island…"Sorry! We only accept cash. " I quickly check if I have enough to pay the hotel and when I ask where the nearest ATM is, I am informed of the worst: There is only one ATM on the opposite side of the island. Furthermore, it′s usually out of service. I am supposed to stay on this island three days and I planned tours where I can only pay in cash. Therefore, I must opt either to find another place to sleep (one that accepts cards) or cancel the tours (and therefore let a local lose a business opportunity).

After returning to Brussels and to the work routine, I leave home for another day at the office. Since sometimes it’s hard to find time to have breakfast at home, I stop to buy a croissant. Of course, and as always, I have no cash because I rarely carry money on me. My first reflex is to look for my contactless card et voilá, problem solved, I can enjoy my breakfast.

1 An ancient practice

It is not possible to establish a clear explanation of the concept of a society without physical money without initially outlining a connection between this method and the nature and evolution of the human being (as a fundamental and basic pillar of society).

Considering that money is an abstract concept based on trust, and that a cashless society is an economic system in which all financial transactions are carried out through different methods than the transfer of banknotes and coins (Chakravorti & Mazzotta, 2013), we can say clearly that we have been “cashless” before and that this term is not that “contemporary” nor “revolutionary”.

Trading (considered as the exchange of goods and services) is as old as humans. There are those who defend the possibility of this practice being older than us and that its foundation was born through a concept, built from antiquity to the present day, called bartering. To barter is nothing less than the exchange of goods or services in which the payment form is exactly the same premise: goods or services (Glyn, 2002). Although the fact that bartering may be older than the human being itself, the introduction of coins as a monetary system of exchange and maintenance of value was brought into society much later. Around the 6th century BC in the kingdom of Lydia, the King was the entrepreneur who pushed the use of gold and silver for the creation of coins (Metcalf, 2012). After the expansion of the use of coins as a method for buying services and goods all over the globe, and with the natural growth of its use and intensity, it became quite uncomfortable to have to carry a large number of heavy objects when it was intended to acquire an important and significantly expensive object or service and, therefore, quickly urged the need to develop an alternative that would effectively fight this problem. The solution? Money in paper form. In a first phase only as a form of receipt on a payment that was to be paid in the future, until the creation of banknotes, like those that circulate in our hands these days. However, as with any development or innovation that has addressed the latest technological clusters, not all regions of our planet have adapted to evolution in the same time frame. In Europe, Napoleon was the “Entrepreneur”… but only around 1800 (Anderson, 2008).

History proves that we have lived in the past in a totally cash free society. However, it could be quite subjective to define the true "value" of an action when the intention would be to use it as a form of payment to serve a good or service given. One could commit oneself to go into the jungle to hunt a wild and highly dangerous animal. But the problem would be the quantification of such a courageous act. Would it worth four loaves of bread? Five bags of rice? Who defines the value? The introduction of the coin gave “quantification” and value to an act, service or good.

We live in a world where we govern our actions based on our needs. Needs potentiate change, change potentiates adaptation. Concerning money, we can affirm that the human being has developed all their actions and evolution(s) based on their needs, and in that case doing justice to the famous sentence that states: "intelligence is the capacity to adapt to change" (Faranda, 1991). We didn’t do anything irregular about how we prioritized the changes in the financial system, we only adapted according to our own needs.

Nevertheless, the changes that we are facing nowadays in the capital markets, meaning the “war” against cash, are not following the same patterns that were observed in our society in the past. This time it looks like that this battle is being driven by private corporations (financial institutions mostly) and not by consumers needs. At the end of the day each transaction done by cash is one less commission for Visa or MasterCard.

In countries such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Singapore more than half of consumer payments are made through the use of non-cash methods (Thomas, Jain, & Angus, 2013).

Taking all the facts into consideration, it’s important to place some structural questions. Are we then clearly closer to a cashless society rather than a society based on physical money? Will society benefit or lose if transactions occur without the exchange of physical notes and coins? Is the transformation towards a cashless society the answer to a greater financial inclusion, transparency and financial ethics? Should this change be driven by private agents with clear commercial purposes, or should it be driven just by consumers behavior?

2 The global picture

My first professional experience was as sales assistant in one of the largest local agencies of a Portuguese private bank. The agency's responsibilities and tasks respected a revolving regime, and many times (perhaps because I was the youngest in the agency and because it was the least favorite job of the staff) I ended up responsible for the treasury management of the agency. This meant all the physical money available within the bank was on the full responsibility of one person. It is important to note that at the time I was a 20-year-old recent graduate. I cannot forget the pressure that haunted me then, and today whenever I reminisce about the subject, I think: “what a total absurdity!” A real absurdity for all the obvious risks and losses of efficiency that are naturally associated with this practice: the risk of a young inexperienced person with total daily responsibility for amounts around 200,000 euros in notes and coins; the risk of assaults since the transport of values carried out by security professionals was quite predictable and respected a well-known routine; the loss of working time that would be incurred by carrying out this task for the day-to-day accounting and verification of good health of the money in question. In the end, a sales assistant should be searching for sales and business opportunities. All these factors push me to reflect on an important topic: the true cost and implications of the massive existence of physical money, especially for the biggest economic agents. And this not only happens with banks, but with all companies handling cash transactions. No matter their size, they need to manage physical cash in the end of the day. This includes bakeries, bars, clothes shops, etc.

With all its adjacent characteristics, we can say that money on hand can be considered as an expensive market product, especially as a service provided by financial services firms (Conradi, 2018). There are costs with human resources whose main function is treasury management; cost of materials and resources such as paper, automated machines to count money and verify its authenticity, as well as its maintenance. Not to mention electricity, rent of space where these values are stored safely; acquisition and maintenance costs of high and advanced security technology; etc. It’s perceptible why private banking institutions are leading the battle against the usage of cash.

The costs that maintenance, management and production of physical money, even with all forms of electronic transactions already existing in developed countries, can reach today frightening amounts like 200 billion dollars per year, as the case is for the United States of America, where more than half of this amount are costs that are attributed to the government (Chakravorti & Mazzotta, 2013). Since there is no such thing as “public money”, it’s easy to understand who pays the bill. In some cases the impact of the usage of cash can represent 1.5% of the GBP on a national economy (Thomas et al., 2013).

On top of all these issues, the problems related to fraudulent counterfeit money, are provoking many governments to consider a switch to a cash free structure (Cole, 2012). This can represent the will, and the acceptance not only for consumers, but also from governors, that the cashless society is indeed the future and the path that nations should follow in order to be able to keep up to the fast-financial developments. Although governors should guarantee that any changes to be made put people’s needs first. And only after that should they care about the market infrastructure.

There is also another important point to consider when we talk about the costs of a cash-based society, and that’s the ecological “cost”. If we consider that the major part of the bank notes that circulate around the world are made of paper or polymer (basically plastic) (Matamoros, 2018), we should think about the size of the ecological footprint that the production and storage of money has on our environment. Additionally, it should be considered, as well, all the products used on the production process that can deteriorate the planet such as: linen, steel, ink, etc. (Storm, 2014).

Although cash-based transactions represent 85% of the financial undertaking (Thomas et al., 2013), if we look at the case using a worldwide perspective, these numbers don’t represent society′s rejection of the benefits of a cash-free society. Rather these numbers represent the lack of technological development on most of the big and underdeveloped countries, resulting into barriers for a more digital, financial environment. There’s still a lot of discrepancies on this topic when facing developed and underdeveloped or developing countries.

It′s true that the revolution on information and communication technologies provided all the necessary tools to develop electronic payments systems that became faster, easier and cheaper, opening an highway to reach a cash-free society (Papadopoulos, 2007). We possess as well already some important tools to support the shift into cashless, namely digital transactions system. However, some of the tools that are still in place in the banking industry are from the 70's, and they should be brought to a more developed and updated environment in order to face the digital challenges of today, as cyber-crime.

3 Wealthy Motivations

When approaching the subject of the switch process from a cash-based society to a cashless society, it’s not possible to ignore the motivations that agents have. In the same way, it’s important to consider and to analyse the different motivations that drive the developed and emerging countries, as these countries see economic benefit on a society less dependent on physical cash.

Probably the biggest example that we have nowadays from a developed country close to cash-free society is Sweden, where a huge and expressive majority of the financial transactions are done digitally. People believe that the transition to a cash-free society is almost granted and therefore the government should take serious measures to follow and adapt to those transformations (Dean, 2018). A strong majority of the population believe that carrying cash isn’t necessary. Nowadays in Sweden, you can do a money transfer with a mobile phone number and even pay for shopping on the street markets with a mobile application. It seems that everyone adapted easily to the benefits and comfort of this new “way of living”. However, the strong majority does not mean everyone, and therefore elder and disabled people don’t find it easy to cope with this change. The owners of the shops agree with this system since they save bank fees applied on physical money deposits and on the counting of coins. But… should the banks be allowed legally to perform such discrimination in deterioration of the usage of cash? In the case of Sweden, for business owners, digital money represents less expenses and more security, and that explains why they feel attracted to cashless system (Von Post, 2018).

Governments also have their own motivations and assumptions on what are the advantages of the transition to a cashless economy. One of the most important advantages that should be highlighted is the effectiveness that it can have on reducing criminality (Hansen, 2011). Economists, for example, believe that the bank notes with the highest nominal value, are used mainly to sustain illegal activities. There’s also the fact that a cash-free environment can fight tax evasion (Rogoff, 2018).

4 Concerns of the impoverished

In a world where the social and economic wealth finds such divergent realities, the focus shouldn’t be only the understanding of the outcomes that can be extracted from a cashless society, but how to understand how it can help to promote greater financial inclusion.

When we analyse the statistics of digital transactions, we also find this extreme difference between developed countries and emerging markets. As an example, in the Netherlands the percentage of cashless transactions was around 60% of the total financial transactions, while in India this percentage was of 2% in 2013 (Thomas et al., 2013). So, you can see this is a real gap between developed and developing markets.

It's also a fact that when we talk about the progress towards a cash-free society, we should clearly understand the main differences and needs that concern the undeveloped countries, that can, in some part, be slightly different from the needs noticed on the developed countries. The principle fact that affects underdeveloped countries can be found between the risk of carrying cash associated with robberies and the criminal activity linked to “untracked” money. Also, from the point of many critics of the cashless society argue that a society based only on digital money will remove power from the less fortunate parts of the society. The masses of non-included will be without access to the financial system, what actually works against financial inclusion.

In November 2016, India’s Prime Minister removed all 500 and 1000 denominated rupees banknotes from the financial system whipping out almost 86% of its physical cash (Rowlatt, 2016). Although the process that was considered was not the best channel possible and was already criticized by several economists, the causes that led Narenda Modi to act towards a society less based on cash were quite important for the country. The aim was to reduce black market funding and fight tax evasion (it was estimated that at the time only less than 10% of the population was paying income taxes (Income Tax Department - Government of India, 2018)). Perhaps, this specific case in India was driven too fast and too radically and maybe that was not the best way possible to reach the desired results of a cashless society. This move from the government brought chaos to the streets, where people that didn’t have bank accounts run out of cash, serving as a proof that, sometimes, drastic changes are not the best option. However, its not possible to disagree that fighting tax evasion helps underdeveloped countries to raise money, so they can increase the investments in some priority sectors such as: education, health, transportation, infrastructures, etc. At the same time, this movement from the Indian government, if performed in a more orderly fashion, could represent the opening of a new door for greater financial inclusion. Data shows that the number of adults having a bank account, in India, is now around 80%, while in 2011 this percentage was estimated to be around 35% (ET Bureau, 2018). But still, there are still 20% of Indians without it, and for India 20% represents a lot of people. These people cannot be ignored.

The switch towards a cash-free society, if done in a way that could be reachable and attractive for everyone single element of a certain society, has a strong importance. It has the power to improve the level of financial inclusion, making it possible for low-income groups to access certain financial services they were not able to reach before (Vishal, 2014). If the switch is done in an inclusive way, developing countries can reach their goal of perusing a better visibility and international statute (Alao & Sorinola, 2015).

5 When the extremes meet

From a personal perspective, I am the kind of person who does not like to carry physical cash and I seldom do. I always use my bank card when I want to pay for something, I do mainly online shopping and all my payments or financial transactions are done via digital platforms. I prefer this method because I believe for me it’s more comfortable, less risky and lowers the possibility of spending money on unnecessary products. Due to this personal belief, that I think is shared with most of the people from my generation in Europe, I always try to carry the minimum of notes and coins, even when travelling to places with different currencies. However, when I was in Indonesia, although I was always carrying money with me, the max amounts you could withdraw, from the few available ATMs, was quite limited and in some occasions, where I wanted to buy a good or service, I chose not to. Not because I didn’t want to but because I wanted to keep some physical money with me to prevent any unexpected needs (where cards were not accepted). The results? I didn’t contribute to the local economy as much as I could have, even though sometimes the amounts could represent an average monthly local salary. This made me think…

If we consider the current state of development regarding financial digital transactions in the biggest part of European countries, it’s almost impossible to disagree that the trend is moving towards less cash. It means that the mentioned citizens will reduce their dependency on physical cash over the years, getting into a state of adaptation where proceeding any different than that will feel unnatural. There would be an impact for the sectors of tourism where foreigners will be less used to carry physical cash, since this behaviour and habit will spread across borders. This could represent a loss of opportunities for the developing countries with high tourism ratios, if they are not able to adapt to the exigent consumer behaviour. It could create a bigger gap and divergences between developed countries and underdeveloped countries, resulting on a trap for impoverished countries creating barriers to their economic, political and social growth. This is the key factor that proves why technologic instruments and expertise should be shared between the edges of the society to promote fairness and hope for the development of the third world. It’s clearly a win-win situation. For citizens in developed countries, it represents the opportunity to keep their habits and for the underdeveloped countries it represents the capability to create better economic conditions.

6 Red flags

There is no perfect universe, neither in theory nor reality. Taking this indisputable truth into account, we can argue that the cashless society is not an exception. Thus, the task is to ponder if the outcomes in terms of fairness, transparency and ethics incorporated in the advantages surpass (in a large scale) all the barriers and constraints carried by the disadvantages of a cashless system.

The critics have raised several negative highlights to this transition, namely: the loss of some of the personal freedoms due to the high control on all the assets that an individual might hold; the lack of trust in the financial environment itself; the risks associated with cyber attacks if all transactions are based on digital platforms and the loss of freedom of choice.

There are some serious problems that, in my opinion, need consideration and should be deeply explored and analysed. One concrete example, the fact that people do spend more if they have easy access to digital possibilities. People do spend more if they are given with easier payment methods. Nonetheless, banking institutions already assumed this as a real problem, and there are already quite some solutions being applied. These include limits on contactless payments and limits on daily expenses. Barclays is even going further, giving the possibility for clients to “switch off” the permission of the usage of any electronic card to certain type of payments in order to help vulnerable customers (BBC News, 2018).

But Barclays is still a commercial bank, and that raises one of the most serious problems with cashless society now. All digital money, nowadays, is held on private institutions with commercial purposes (banks). If governments don’t control properly this aspect, we might face commercialisation on all cash. Central banks are the holders of the “value” of the currency in every economy, being the only ones able to change cash for cash at a ratio of 1-to-1, without any commercial motives behind it. The State should guarantee that it is able to perform one of its main responsibilities. It should protect the economic system and provide liquidity solutions to all the citizens as a way of independence from the private sector. This is one of the main reasons why retail banks, for example, are leading the battle against cash, and why governments are looking for ways to digitalize money at a central level, like the e-krona, in Sweden.

Sweden is analysing a plan in order to introduce digital currency, named e-krona, in order to adapt to the inevitable cashless society. The aim is to issue central bank money in digital form working as a supplement to cash and to the money held in private bank accounts (Skingsley, 2018).

The country could be seen as on the forefront of leading such fundamental structural changes, that might bring a totally different reality to financial systems as we know them today. Although, the “digital experiment” is not only being carried out by developed economies. Some emerging markets realized the opportunity to extend access to fundamental financial services to all parts of the population and they are also considering the option of issuing central bank digital currencies. The motives that drive them (being already a trend noticed on emerging economies) is to seek financial inclusion, reduce costs and risk, cut the negative environmental impact of cash and fight money laundering and the black economy. An example is the successful pilot project with the digital peso, launched in Uruguay (Ingves, 2018).

The exposure with an uncontrolled transition into a cash-free environment does not end there. There are also the risks of macroeconomic manipulation and censure that might be applied by governments. Negative interests can work as a form of macroeconomic manipulation, where people are obliged to spend more in order to not lose money. Banning a certain individual or group of individuals from receiving financial transactions can also work as a way of censuring, giving the opportunity to governments, especially authoritarian ones, to shut down whomever they feel like (anti-corruption organizations, whistle-blowers, political competitors, journalist, etc).

7 Why is cashless society an ethical case?

Contemplating the simplicity of the definition of ethics as a field of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour, we can conclude that indeed all actions and decisions based on a human factor can be subjected to a judgment. Additionally, a larger discussion is needed to define what is wrong and what can be considered right considering several subjective factors such as the cultural footprint. Although for what concerns cashless society, the distinction between right and wrong is quite simple in my opinion. The honourable element inhabits in the outcome that the changes of a society less based on cash would bring to the world. How effectively would it fight black markets? How efficiently it would help to improve transparency in the financial environment? How dramatically would it stand for financial inclusion of the impoverished? How capable is it to spread greater equality?

After the big subprime mortgage crisis, the financial sector has taken several measures to promote ethics and trust. This, while showing that questions such as credit risk analysis, risk management and compliance are becoming one of the most important fields of expertise inside the biggest financial companies and infrastructures. However, even though all these measures are highly important and extremely necessary to keep our memory lucid and to avoid the mistakes made in the past and even though these concerns are unquestionable, ethics is more than just “keeping our house clean”. Nowadays, ethics has evolved into something much more complex that also considers what we can do to help keep “our street clean”. Is it ethical that private banks are the heads of the battle against cash and promoting a wider cash-free economy? It could backfire to the industry itself, as the “guys” that keep driving their actions based merely on profit and disregarding all people’s real problems and struggles. Because, in the end what the individual will see is an industry chasing the fees, since, indeed, one transaction in cash is one less fee for Visa or Mastercard.

Governments should protect consumers taking into account their needs, guarantying that financial inclusion really occurs, and that it’s just not a driven force that it’s harming the most fragile part of the population. Today in some European countries, fuel providers are obliged to offer a basic type of fuel to customers, and not only the highly priced ones with additives. This is done to fight market manipulation and to protect consumers. Why cannot the same be applied to banks? They should not be able to penalize the usage of cash in benefit of the usage of cash-free options. Governments must act in order to ensure that, because private agents can shape their business in order to provide attractive solutions to customers, but they shouldn’t be able to shape the market according to their own interests.

Forasmuch as technology is concerned, we are in possession today of great tools in order to promote a switch from cash to digital. However, for the banking industry itself there is still a need to improve and solidify the older applications in order to create a safer and stronger digital environment. One that is able to fight cyber-attacks, and digital crime.

It’s clear, as described before, that there is an obvious distinction between the main motivations that drive the developed and the underdeveloped countries to switch gradually to this type of economic system. Although they have different root causes and aspirations it′s also evident that all of them are legitimated. In the end all of them seek better and improved structural implementations that would bring benefits for the society.

Over the years, financial companies have developed serious thoughts and strategies about corporate and social responsibility pursuing the corporate citizenship. Considering that in very simple words CSR is a business model that helps a company be socially accountable, not only to itself, but also to its stakeholders, and, most importantly, the public, we can argue that cashless society should be held accountable not only by corporate agents but for the entire financial sector, making it one of the biggest priorities on a new and reformed “Financial Social Responsibility” vision.

Cash free society brings clear advantages for all the agents involved in the economic chain: governments, commercial banks, corporates and individuals. For the governments it can be translated into, less tax evasion, less black markets, more transparency on revenues and profits. Therefore, more money available that could be redirected to social development with investments in primary sectors such as: education, health and infrastructures, bringing more quality of life to individuals, especially in poor countries.

Granting all this, it’s still not a change that would happen tomorrow as it can result in some unpleasant situations as it was the case of India and all the complex problems that raised after the prime-minister decisions back in 2016. The world is not ready yet for a shift into a society 100% based on digital money. There’s still a huge exposure for the elder and for the disabled. These changes should be considered sensitive and should be performed gradually giving opportunity for adaption to all the counterparties. However, it’s a fact that in some years from now, considering the consumers trends, the world is going to have less bank notes and coins in circulation. It’s up to the financial industry to lead the dance, in performing the first moves towards an expedition to financial inclusion, transparency and ethics.

At the end of the day, the usage of cash is still an expression of freedom. Its up not only to the financial institutions, but mainly to governments to guarantee that it remains a fundamental freedom as long as society wants to keep it like that. The changes on the capital markets should continue to follow the trends that were observed already in the middle age. It should be driven by the motivations and the needs of the consumers, and not a desire of private agents. It’s all about fighting real-world problems, providing real-world solutions.

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