Danger: cashless society approaching

By Nury Vittachi

*

Something weird and shocking is going on: money is going out of fashion.

It's true. A sign went up at my local car park forbidding transactions in actual cash. The small print explained that the company from now on only accepted money in non-cash forms "for your convenience".

                I HATE that phrase.

Whenever I see it on a corporate sign, it always means the same thing: "We are going to inconvenience you, but we are going to claim the opposite is true, because we believe all our customers are idiots." (Guilty parties include HSBC and Standard Chartered.)

The cashless thing seriously worries me. The Paypal company has just announced it is launching junior accounts to hold pocket money. My own daughter, aged nine, started carrying a card to use on the school vending machine.

                STOP! Has anyone thought to ask: is a cashless society a good thing?
*
I decided to conduct an experiment to answer this question. I determined to spend one entire day without a single coin or banknote in my pockets and see how long I could survive.

The designated day dawned. I work up. I emptied my pockets. I armed myself with one stored-value card and one credit card. I marched out of the house.
*
Transaction one was paying to get to work.

Hmm. Tricky. I found that smaller vehicles, such as some minibuses, taxis and aged rickshaw men, took cash only. However, big corporate forms of transport such as trains and double-decker buses accepted cards. I managed to get to work, but not in my preferred fashion.
*
For transaction two, I awarded myself breakfast as a reasonable reward for showing up at the office. (Well, I think that's reasonable, but maybe you'd better not tell my boss.)

Tasty smells came from several roadside stalls, especially from one woman selling sandwiches filled with freshly scrambled eggs and corn beef hash. But she had no card-reader. I had to walk to a cluster of chain-stores, including McDonald's, which accepted plastic payment for plastic food.
*
Transaction three should have taken place on my way back to the office. A street musician played the erhu beautifully. But he didn't accept credit cards.
*
Transaction four, lunch, was the same problem as transaction two. I had to bypass a stall selling deep-fried, stuffed chilies, to go to a boring, proper restaurant.
*
Transaction five bought me something to read on the long ride home. A curb-side news vendor offered me an out-of-date imported magazine at a deep discount. I had to decline and walk for ten minutes until I found a 7-Eleven, where I bought, with a card, a similar magazine, at three times the price!
*
The final verdict?

Yes, the cashless society is here.

And it stinks.  

It prevented me doing business with all the hardworking people who deserved it: the scrambled egg woman, the minibus driver, the taxi driver, the fried chili woman, the street musician and the newspaper vendor.

I was forced to give my transactions only to the big businesses: transport corporations, McDonald's and 7-Eleven.

AND I ended up spending more than usual.

The buyer loses.

The vendor-on-the-street loses.

The faceless corporations win.

Cashless equals heartless.

Incidentally, a lawyer tells me that signs saying "no payments in cash" can be ignored.

"No court would punish a person for honestly paying a bill," he said.

Anyone want to join me to fight this trend?
 

Comments

[khirsah]

not forgetting, any vendor who uses card readers have to pay the service providers a certain fee... further adding on to their operating costs and charges back to the consumers in one way or another.

[Flubber]

I'm behind you on this one, Mister Jam.

Credit cards incur a 3% charge to the vendor and this can only mean higher costs to the consumers. I believe cash is king and it should be accepted everywhere. There are certain people who cannot afford to carry a stored-value or credit card, and who are we to discriminate them from buying certain goods payable only by cards?

Of course the flip side can be attractively shiny - the convenience of a cashless society means cashiers will not be liable for any missing dollar at the end of the day since all transactions are electronically made, it is more environmentally-friendly with less paper used for money, etc.

Yet these reasons only make the faceless giant corporations richer.. so I'm with you on this one.

[Teri__A]

this group tries hard to be light and funny but it regularly strays into deep and serious waters.

this thing about the cashless society is extremely important. I wish the bankers and decision makers of our society could read the above.

but i disagree with people who say that the extra costs are the issue. i think there are hidden costs, but they are not the issue. the real issue is that a cashless society will make every person and every action traceable. You will not be able to do anything private, ever again.

Think about how the US govt treated john lennon, tracking his every move secretly. His only crime was to have long hair and be popular. and the US govt of that period was far more liberal than 90 per cent of other govts.

[Sara]

I don't want to sound like a religious nut but the Book of Revelation in the Bible clearly describes a period when evil rules the world. One of the signs is "no one will be able to buy or sell without using a number".
Whether you take this literally, as a sign of "the end days", or you take this figuratively, as one of the signs when humanity has gone off track, it's still relevant.
Anything which puts all power into the hands of faceless corporations is seriously bad news.

[fardel]

Agree with you all; on top of your aguments: loosing your job makes you loose your bank acccount, your credit card and you become a ghost in a inhumane society;
But there is one way to beat this new trend, through education:
if nobody uses cashless transactions on petty things, the system will die by itself.

[karuna]

Sara
My initial thought on reading your note was that you have just made it up.
Then did a google and found the bible does state something similar in "revelation 13:17"
Awaiting now for our Master Cifu Nury to enlighten us.

[Chin]

I think the most surprising thing in the whole article is that it took you more than 2 seconds to find a 7-11 nearby. Those things are bloody everywhere.

[Deepak]

That's a good news actually, for my son. He can go to MacDonald and put 10 marbles on the counter and ask for a regular french fries, take away!

A hungry poor soul can go to a restaurant, eat whatever he want and when asked for bill can say "Well you accept No Cash! I have No Cash. See for yourself. Thank you!

I think we can try these!

[Rika]

The ability to visualise the value of an item is getting lost by taking away coins and banknotes. Money, one can count, it is tactile – a card isn’t. To have only numbers on little sheets of paper which nobody really reads is a very bad idea. My friend told me the story of her 3 year old nagging shopaholic daughter who responded to her mother’s claim of not having any more money: ‘But you have your plastic card!’ And that was 20 years ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I like credit and debit cards. They give a lot of peace of mind when travelling and they are utterly convenient when buying big things like a new car – I’m not feeling really good running around with thousands of pounds in my pockets. But I always have a bit of cash as well, I never ever use store cards – 1 credit card checked regularly and paid by direct debit.

However, I believe it is not the card that is the devil. It’s the lack of social conduct. Technologies develop faster than social rules can pick up on it. E.g. these days ‘borrowing is better than saving’ and ‘mobile phone calls have precedence before ongoing conversations’. And as long as parents don’t feel obliged to teach their children differently, as long as schools don’t pick up on it, and most of all, as long as adults don’t give a good example – society will run free and big companies will thrive on it. It’s down to every single one of us to rectify the current trends.

[Adalina Lo]

I don't know...

I think they should at least be consistent - either everything, (including vendors, prostitutes, paying for the shrink) is paid by Octopus that is linked to your bank account which also helps you collect mileage, get discounts at Lane Crawford, etc etc!

I just hate carrying all these cards with me.

If anything, I think we have way too many ways of paying for things.

"Buy over X HKD, become 'VIP' and you get 10% off." I have a stack of those sorts of cards.

What happened to those watches with microchips that kept all our records, transferred money, etc. that the geeks promised us years ago??

[Leo]

Nury!!! Count me in!!!
Say no to "No cash is allowed" now!!
And we should yell "Cash is King" in return!!!

Anyway, I really hate cards, especially credit cards. So what if a person has a credit card? It doesn't mean everything he/she does can earn him a credit and the words he/she said are creditable.

Furthermore, the credit card thing gives people the wrong idea that they can buy everything in advance...lol, eventually people end up broke...what's the point in getting a credit card that charges you a service charge every time you buy something from somewhere?

[Kiwi in HK]

A cashless society is just a conspiracy by large corporations. Cash is king as far as I'm concerned.
Try telling a taxi driver after a ride to the airport you want to pay him with an Octopus card or credit card. Chances are you'll miss your flight because you'll have been swiftly taken to the nearest police station by the taxi driver!!
Bring back the old fashion way of making transactions I say.

[sky watcher]

The cashless society is going to be great for the multinationals, for the big (almost entirely Western) firms such as McDonald's and Starbucks and KFC, but it will be very bad for the ordinary people trying to make a buck. I hope people will walk past McDonald's and go and buy street food as a protest. It's one of the tastiest protests you can make!

[Bushra]

yes, i am with you....it was a really a great piece.....i sincerely wish it acts as an eye opener....

[Karlos]

Here in the U.S. it says right on the Federal Reserve Notes; "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE". Still, you run into "No Cash" from time to time. It's not just the corporations who fare well using a cashless system. It's the banks who are trying to skim 3-5% of a nation's GDP. Much akin to a tax.

[Dancer]

The opposite is also true though. I forget to bring an Octopus card to work one day (That's Sheung Shui to Stanley with three types of different transportation in total) and it was so difficult to scramble the right amount of coins. I ended up paying more for each fare.

What about all these new companies that wouldn't accept small change? What's with that? Even 7-eleven refused my 10 cents, 20 cents and 50 cents, saying that it is 'company policy' not to accept ANY small change. It's like these coins lose their value all of a sudden!

[Allee]

Abolish the federal reserve! ;) have the dollar be as good as gold, screw paying interest on a bleep of fucking light... "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson
http://restoreamerica.weebly.com/-federal-reserve--income-tax--economy.html

[Sweet]

I wish I could be so lucky to be paid in cash. This way I wouldn't have to pay my fair share of taxes. Then I could share my savings by spending it on a cheep non taxed burger. I know I'm in the wrong business.

[James]

You realize that if a cashless society was ever officially imposed, then all those people would realize that they would get card readers to do business, but since your living in a world w/ cash, they dont find it neccessary yet

[Nury]

Sweet, believe me, you do NOT want a job in which you are paid in cash. Those are the jobs with low income, no benefits and high risks. I know, I've been there. I can remember collecting my little envelope of money every week. It seemed like a lot then, but it was really a tiny fraction of what people who were paid direct to their banks were getting.

And James, I don't think it is just a matter of everyone getting card readers. Maybe street news vendors might get them. Do you seriously think beggars will get card readers? or rickshaw men? No, we have to have cash to be flexible enough for the poor people on the margins of society. If cash disappears, these people will suffer.

[anon]

No cash , no freedom. Dont be a slave to the system. The financial masters of the universe will hold complete control of your circumstances at the touch of a button.This is the key to their new world order.

[cashless]

Nothing wrong with electronic money, we just need to setup the system properly... it is a technological revolution.

[Ngoni]

Sara, you are absolutely correct. You are not a religious nut. You just read the Bible correctly. In Revelation 13:16-17 it says that "He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, And that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." Could this be the mark of the beast? I remember going to a youth group meeting when I was 13 or 14. One of the men there was telling me that VISA was the mark of the beast. He said that VI is 6 in Roman numerals. "S" stands for six in America. And the A stood for something else I can't remember, but the number it stood for was 6. 666. It doesn't amaze me that the first bank issued credit card was from Bank of America which produced VISA or that the first credit card to be established was from a man here in America. Maybe that's why other countries call America "the great satan." Could Mastercard and American Express and other credit cards also be the image of the beast, the beast being VISA? Read on in Revelation. It also talks about people getting it in their hand or in their foreheads. Have you read any articles on biometrics and implantable chips to make it easier for people to be identified? The Bible is not fiction, it is real. We are living in the end times.

[Ngoni]

In addition to that, haven't you noticed that our current currency has "In God We Trust" on it? Credit and debit cards don't have that on them. It seems to me that satan would do anything to eliminate God from our conscious.

[sej]

Ngoni, 666 was actually a representation of one of the Roman Emperors, Nero I think, just a man who was considerably disliked at the time, not necessarily because he was evil, although persecuting Christians could perhaps count towards that score.

I believe also many, if not all, of the other emperors were also represented by numbers, but as they were not disliked as much as Nero, their numbers didn't become as well known.

The number calculated also differed depending on which language was used, whether it be Hebrew, Greek, Latin, etc.

As for numbers, remember, they don't appear just on credit cards. They happen to appear on bank notes and coins too, so we were using numbers hundreds, if not thousands, of years prior to credit cards.

And lastly, humans, being the beasts they are, will look for patterns in numbers, and find them, even though there are none. So the fact "VISA" could be transliterated into "666" was pure fluke.

[fardel]

We are numbers too
social security number...
passport number.....
A number in a town, statistics, faceless numbers erased by a flu pandemic, a tsunami , a golf war, or sucked dry by the financers, the numbers of vaccine which can be sold if an international scare is started.
Yes we are somewhere at the ned of Human civilization.
Numbers have taken over already

[Not joking]

I do not have the same religious beliefs as Ngoni has, but he / she is still correct. People who live in modern cities are continuously digitally tracked whether they know it or not.

If you carry a mobile phone, your location is being continuously triangulated. Probably no one uses this information, but if someone in power takes a dislike to you they can track you day and night.

Your Oyster /Octopus/ travel card sends information to computers about what transport you are using and your credit/ debit/ stored value card records data of your transactions.

The internet stores copies of every link you visit and every email you send. Privacy is history.

[fardel]

You are right
i ma sorry for the guy whose job is to track me;
he's better be in good physical and mental condition;
Oops ! correction , THEY'd better be in good physical nd mental conditions

[Eris]

My son's school is introducing a cashless catering system. To me it sounds very controlling and a disadvantage to poorer parents. Have emailed them to ask 'why?'. At the very least it seems if they're preparing children to become cashless adults of the future. Am not sure if it's just because I'm a luddite but I think a cashless society is a very bad idea. It stinks of control.

[dave]

If we move to a cashless society it will be the biggest mistake central planners ever made.

The absence of cash will encourage the barter system, and as every well educated human being knows the natural evolution of a barter system results in a commodity based currency which eventually will be gold and/or silver! Once people will get used to using gold and silver as mediums of exchange the demand for the precious metals will skyrocket and their price will go through the roof, and that is before people will start to look at them as a store of value. A cashless society will kill the fiat paper system
http://israelfinancialexpert.blogspot.com/2010/01/if-we-move-to-cashless-society-it-will.html