NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, July 21, 2017

Do we need cash? Humans have used all sorts of things to exchange items of economic value — rare metals, strings of shells and even sunken boulders. Those objects have gotten more ephemeral, with paper money replacing most coins, and digital forms increasingly supplanting paper. Could physical cash go away entirely? Economists see great payoffs in a cashless society: lower transaction costs, new tools to manage economic growth and an end to tax evasion and money laundering. Critics see an end to privacy, frightening new powers for tyrants and costs that would fall disproportionately on the poor. The giant, if unintended, experiment that followed India’s attempt to withdraw 86 percent of cash in circulation showed one thing clearly: The end of cash is not likely to be a neat or simple process.