How Long It Will Be Before Our Society Becomes A Cashless One?

[fools]

5 minutes ago, HeHasRisen said:

OK, so how do you think plane cabin crew with no data connection to the outside world and only using battery card machines manage?

You ask a lot of questions don't ya.

 

The retail system falls to pieces when the visa network goes down or the card machines can't make a connection

Edited October 26, 2022 by fools

[alarmingmark]

7 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

Hopefully yes. The quicker the better.

 

Coinage is annoying and bulky to carry to around.  Banknotes after a while in circulation are filthy, fondled by thousands of pairs of hands, stuffed in and out of sweaty pockets, sat on, farted on, stuffed into dirty wallets or handbags, lying around on all kinds of surfaces, held in many people's mouths.....  If that was any other kind of object being passed around so freely most people wouldn't touch it without a pair of rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant.

 

Cash of course is also a great expense to businesses in its processing,  secure storage and transportation.  For more than the cost of software which can tally everything up, allocate and redistribute at the click of a button.

 

Society has always been moving towards cashless for far longer than most people think. There is reference to an early version of cheques being used right back in Roman times, then came bills of exchange, and modern from cheques developed by the late 1700s.

 

Not forgetting a 'cash' banknote itself is nothing more than a promissory payment note tied to a specific commodity or currency set by the issuing bank.  If it wasn't for such a arrangement, the piece of paper that we preciously hold in our hands is actually in itself valueless.   

 

Even back in the black and white days when 'modern day' consumer banking first came on the scene, people were not using wads of cash to transfer between each other. They were using cheques, bankers drafts, bankers orders. Go look up some images from the 20s, 30s of early banking operations, rooms filled with clerks and typists all processing thousands of cashless transactions. 

 

After the cheques came the plastic cards initially with the fascinating imprinter machine and carbon chits, then electronic transactions with our scrawled signatures on the back of receipts, that evolved into chip and pin machines, then contactless cards and the latest versions of technology removing need for a physical card completely. 

 

Whichever tool is used, it is all doing the same thing.  Deducting an amount of value from one set of computerised figures and increasing value of a different set of computerised figures.  It really is as simple as that.

 

Do we really need to get our knickers in such a twist over the method of how that happens. I suspect most people really don't care.

 

I really don't get the paranoia and hysteria over this.  Nobody is keeping piles of money under their mattress. We all rely on banks at some form. I really don't care if my bank knows how many times I buy a Costa coffee each week or that Sainsbury's is tracking my groceries which I buy the same of every week anyway.  If someone was that desperate to find out my personal habits, they could do that anyway physically.

 

Yes we get targeted advertising, yes we get tracked which sets individual price points on the things we buy. But we all embrace the conveniences and benefits that comes with it.

 

All these features which are hysterically portrayed as invasions into our privacy,  in my opinion, are not so different to things which have come before. The targeted advertising all over the internet every time you click on a link is really not a million miles away from the piles of junk mail we used to receive through our doors everyday. The marketing lists, the community-based local adverts, the flyers being left on our car windscreens...

 

People complain about the amount of information when they sign up for online services but is that really any different to the days of going into a store and having to fill in forms to get HP, credit, club membership or special discount cards. It might have been on paper but it was still logged, reviewed then tracked the same as anything else.

 

Is customer profiling really a million miles apart from the days of being accosted by 1000 clipboard wielding market researchers every time you walked down the street or the days of the census takers knocking on everyone's doors...

 

As I say, I suspect the majority really don't care and are simply interested in maintaining their personalised discounts at their favourite stores and the convenience that comes with targeted online shopping.  If Mr Google knows what I want before I know what I want - is that  really something to be scared of or something we should instead be embracing as a sign of how far we have come and celebrating what we can achieve in technological advancement.

 

It really wasnt that long ago that the thought of a electronic brain that can calculate some simple mathematics was seen as witchcraft... now a cheap pocket calculator is seen as the absolute basic of basics, can be retailed at less than £1 and manufactured in some far eastern workshop for pennies.

All good till the internet goes down …

[RollingJ]

2 minutes ago, alarmingmark said:

All good till the internet goes down …

A great many business went 'card only' early in the pandemic, a number have remained so since, and how many times have you heard of a major problem?

[The_DADDY]

2 minutes ago, RollingJ said:

A great many business went 'card only' early in the pandemic, a number have remained so since, and how many times have you heard of a major problem?

Depends what you call a major problem really.

Some months ago I needed petrol in the car and only had cash.

No problem apart grom the morrisons petrol station was pay at the pump only on all pumps.

So I could buy their fuel I had to go to another petrol station and pay more.

A major problem?

No. 

Definitely an inconvenience though. 

Imagine if most or even all pumps in all petrol stations were like that.

Cash simply wouldn't be an option. I'd call that a major problem 

[ECCOnoob]

1 minute ago, alarmingmark said:

All good till the internet goes down …

Yeah yeah and cash is all so wonderful until it gets lost or stolen or damaged.

 

Not forgetting, you still need an internet system to process cash.  It might astound you to know Banks have been running on computerised networks with the power of the silicon chip for nearly 60 years. They have developed backups.

 

It's no longer Doris in the back office filling in a ledger with a quill. 

[HeHasRisen]

28 minutes ago, fools said:

You ask a lot of questions don't ya.

 

The retail system falls to pieces when the visa network goes down or the card machines can't make a connection

How do you think plane card machines at 37000 feet make a live connection?

 

Answer: they dont. Yet I can still have my beer on a flight. Funny hey.

Edited October 26, 2022 by HeHasRisen

[RollingJ]

1 minute ago, The_DADDY said:

Depends what you call a major problem really.

Some months ago I needed petrol in the car and only had cash.

No problem apart grom the morrisons petrol station was pay at the pump only on all pumps.

So I could buy their fuel I had to go to another petrol station and pay more.

A major problem?

No. 

Definitely an inconvenience though. 

Imagine if most or even all pumps in all petrol stations were like that.

Cash simply wouldn't be an option. I'd call that a major problem 

You mean you have no credit/debit cards?

[The_DADDY]

Just now, RollingJ said:

You mean you have no credit/debit cards?

Where did I say that?

[RollingJ]

Just now, The_DADDY said:

Where did I say that?

Never said you did - I merely asked if you don't have one.

[The_DADDY]

Just now, RollingJ said:

Never said you did - I merely asked if you don't have one.

I have debit but not credit cards.