USA Today Tech Columnist: Millennials Will Live To See a Cashless World (usatoday.com)

"I haven't had a nickel, dime, quarter or penny in my pocket for two years," writes USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham, adding "Why bother? We're now living in what's quickly becoming a cashless society, where credit cards or electronic payments on your phone rule."

His column is addressed to the mayor of Philadelphia, who this week signed a bill that bans cashless stores. Mr. Mayor. It's happening all over the world, and not just from Amazon. We are going cashless. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly for millennials. Banks and credit card companies want this to curb the costs of handling green. Selected merchants are into it now... USA Today's Charisse Jones discovered that cash purchases were down to 30 percent of all retail transactions as of last year compared to 40 percent in 2012. Millennials, she noted here this week, are saying no to cash, with 21 percent of those 23- to 34 years old saying that most of their transactions were in cash in 2016....

Mobile pay is still a sliver of overall retail sales, but it's definitely on the rise. Target, a long holdout, just added Apple Pay to one of its options, following in the footsteps of Best Buy, CVS, Costco and other retail giants who now accept payment via iPhone. The big, lone holdout right now is Walmart, the No. 1 retailer. It does have its own mobile pay app, that links bank payments to QR codes. And Mr. Mayor, good news for you. Walmart still accepts cash, too.

But for how long?

Comments

prefer cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike this crappy columnist I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.

I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.

The day we have a cashless society is the day the cloud atlas economy takes hold. (i.e you are required to spend a certain amount of money a week on consumption and probably negative interest rates and financial fees as punishment if you don't)

That or the world will migrate to Bitcoin I suppose...

Re:prefer cash

[religionofpeas]

I also have a good paying job, no debt, but I haven't used cash in probably a year. Haven't used credit cards either. Instead I mostly use contactless payments. It's quick and easy and I don't need to carry a bulky wallet.

Re:prefer cash

[fahrbot-bot]

I am a millennial with a good paying job with no debt and money in my pocket.
I go out of my way to use cash and avoid credit cards.

I'm a little older, but also debt-free and plenty of income, savings and investments. I use cash *and* credit cards, which aren't a problem if (a) they're no-fee and (b) you pay them off completely every month. Having and using them responsibly also helps your credit score -- which helps me as even my mortgage is paid off -- and you get a one-month float on your money... There's really no reason to avoid them unless you're irresponsible or stupid.

Re:prefer cash

[sfcat]

I also have a good paying job, no debt, but I haven't used cash in probably a year. Haven't used credit cards either. Instead I mostly use contactless payments. It's quick and easy and I don't need to carry a bulky wallet.

On behalf of big brother, thank you for your continuing donation of financial information that we sell to pay for our hookers and blow. That yummy financial info is worth so much more than your fb likes that seem to get you millennial types so worked up...

Re:prefer cash

[Anonymous Coward]

1) More detailed purchase histories are rare but do exist and you can bet many powerful corps would love to expand upon that. Your store-linked cards do this, tiing you to every single item you spend there.

2) Your subversive and effective fliers you handed out at a protest.. (or perhaps your kid). have your printer's UID hidden on them, it was done in the 90s to track down fake money but naturally it expanded so an FBI agent can just scan your print outs and figure out who you are. how? you bought it with a generic card! Well, the price of the item can be estimated and used to narrow down the search... aside from product registrations, store repair plans,... besides, it's not like some printers don't have a serial number in the barcode that could be scanned in... and your generic card has your name connected to it which a bigger store does get access to. This is just a tiny bit of what is involved on this one.

3) embarrassment... buy stuff at a sex shop? buy something innocent at a biz that was later caught sex trafficing? Plan on having a job with real power? Something of use to a government in some way? Inflential on social media? upset the wrong person who has the right connections? privatized spy services are just beginning to get going. your ex's private detective may gain access to such things in the future. accusations can get you fired.

4) private profiling. government is only 1 risk. you can't get a job and you just don't know why.... but 3rd party HR services keep telling places to not hire you. you won't know why; they won't disclose it, the employer will not even know-- that is part of the reason they hire a 3rd party. your purchase history will just be part of it.
Walmart got into trouble for running credit checks on people to decide if they should hire--- they wanted people with bad credit because they can abuse them more!

5) META DATA. you buy X every X at this kind of store. you likely have Y health condition. raise insurance! or don't hire them... lay them off. you might be cheating because why do you buy in these places at these times? The REAL money is in providing guesses from interpretation of the meta data. This information YOU DO NOT OWN and no privacy measures apply because their profile of you is not your property. again, potential for government abuse is HUGE -- your self-centered life might not matter-- but already with no tech--the FBI went after MLK spying on him and trying to even get him to kill himself. your influential leaders can be taken down; hell, you will help them do it by judging others so easily joining the MOB that social media is.

6) Stupid AI profiling. your vague pattern is the same as a pedophile 60%. anybody seeing the profile will act differently to you. We all see stupid Netflix and amazon suggestions based on our profile. Imagine those being actually used for stuff...

Re:prefer cash

[skegg]

Sure, but the store knows the individual items that you purchased, along with your credit card.

You do know there's an entire industry devoted to this data? Purchased & formatted neatly by data brokers and then sold for a handsome profit.

>> And how will that cause me harm ?

At the moment I suspect it won't. But I don't know what will happen in 10 years.
Will you be refused health insurance because you bought too many Twinkies, and not enough greens?
Drank too much Coke? Were making purchases at 11pm instead of being in bed?

Personally, it's for the potential abuses that I CAN'T think of that I prefer cash.

Re:prefer cash

[AmiMoJo]

We could fix this. Stored value cards already exist, you can top them up with cash. They store the balance on the card and use crypto to authenticate transactions. The only flaws are that they include a unique ID that allows transactions to be linked to the card, and they keep a transaction history.

We can make a card that uses a random ID or none at all, and has no history. Then it's basically the same as cash, but more convenient.

Re:prefer cash

[JD-1027]

Same boat as you, but we need to go one step further. For those of us who know the proper way to use credit cards, many only GIVE you "cash" back.
Amazon Visa - 2% restaurants always (3% on Amazon)
Chase and Discover - Rotating 5% back on some categories

That is free money.

Personal note... cash is just too much of a hassle for me. I don't like always having to make sure I have enough in my wallet and dealing with change, so we usually just do credit card. I haven't run into any issues with companies knowing what I spend my money on. In some cases I get relevant coupons that actually help.

Re:prefer cash

[anegg]

Same boat as you, but we need to go one step further. For those of us who know the proper way to use credit cards, many only GIVE you "cash" back. Amazon Visa - 2% restaurants always (3% on Amazon) Chase and Discover - Rotating 5% back on some categories That is free money.

It is not exactly free money. The money that you get back came from the transaction fee that the credit card levied onto the merchants who sold you goods/services. Those merchants marked up the price of their goods/services to include the credit card transaction fee, and since so many people use credit cards these days, even for small transactions, the cost of everything has been increased so that we can enjoy this "convenience." Few merchants even bother giving a discount for cash any more, so we pay the price of credit even if we don't use it. Which justifies using credit cards even more (so that we can get at least some of our cash back).

Meanwhile, the "retail credit" industry has managed to insert themselves into practically every retail transaction, skimming their percent or two, and growing very fat doing it. Hey - apparently we like the convenience of paying with plastic, so what's the harm?

Meanwhile, the records linking all of the purchases to the purchasers are growing in huge numbers, and can be analyzed to determine many things. And that information isn't just in the hands of the retailers, because they make agreements and sell that information off. And ultimately it is available to the government, because although various constitutional protections (in the US) keep the government out of our knickers without a warrant, there is nothing stopping the government from buying commercially whatever is available - which happens to be a lot more data than could ever be gathered with a warrant.

So yea, congratulate yourself on knowing the "proper" way to use credit cards so that you can get back a few percent of your own money. But be aware that you are the product that is being bought and sold, with every transaction being financed by your own money, with the minuscule amount they return to you being the price at which you are being bought.

Re:prefer cash

[bozzy]

I'm in a similar position as you and the GP, but the "free money" is only "free" up to the point when you realize that use of cash maintains the spending friction that keeps impulse buys at bay.

Statistically speaking, you'll spend more when using a credit card compared to cash due to less friction, which blows away any savings you get with a cash back card. You'll have to be extremely well disciplined to come out ahead with the cashback card on a given transaction. But over time, the odds are stacked against us due to being human.

A debit card has a slightly higher friction than a credit card due to the mental connection of the transaction with your bank balance. But with a credit card, there is no such friction. Even less friction when a credit card is tied to mobile pay, or god forbid, some IoT device (alexa) you don't even hold.

Re:prefer cash

[terrycarlino]

It's all very well that many of us use a mixture of cash, credit and debit cards, and there are many good reasons to want to use cash, including surveillance, but one issue is that some people must pay a premium to not use cash. And often they are the people who can least afford to lose money to fees.

We've covered this before. In the U.S. banks are not required to do business with anyone. They can decide they don't want to do business with you. This includes Visa and Mastercharge (who by the way have been banning individuals based on their views and not their financials.)

Most often banks will require a minimum amount to open an account. And require it sit unused for some period of time. Poor people often don't have enough money to meet these requirements. So they can't get a check account. That means no debit card. If they have bad or no credit they can't get a credit card. They must pay a fee for pre-paid cards.

Having only cash becomes a barrier to entry. Certain neighborhoods already have problems with a lack of stores, particularly grocery stores. If stores around these neighborhoods won't take cash that makes the problem even worse.

cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[OrangeTide]

There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.

Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[niftydude]

The people insisting on it and claiming it will be inevitable are the people profiting from it. If enough sock puppets and talking heads move public opinion such that it seems like a foregone conclusion, then people will be more likely to sleep walk into the brave new world of zero privacy and nickel and diming of every purchase.

Re:cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction. I don't understand why people insist that the way of the future is to fork over a few percent of your income to credit card companies.

There is a cost to the merchant for handling cash - theft, counting, transportation, bank deposits/withdrawals, etc.

Do cash handling costs add up to what the merchant pays to accept credit cards? I suspect not (but I don't work in retail).

But I strongly suspect cash handling costs are much more than what the merchant pays to accept debit card payments.

Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[niftydude]

He's not wrong. Time is money, and time a business owner has to spend (either his or an employee's) to go to the bank and deposit the day's take, or withdraw rolls or change has a cost.

Re: cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[Krishnoid]

Foregone conclusion? Sleep walk? The millenials are born into a digital world where a cell phone gives them more reach than anything the previous generation had at their age. This isn't something they need to be convinced to accept -- it's reality from day one.

By the next generation, anyone who didn't have some digital dirt in their childhood may just be treated as a late bloomer or someone who lost their virginity later in life, not much beyond something of a curiosity.

Re:cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[OrangeTide]

You don't understand why people don't like making daily/weekly trips to their bank?

Maybe we need something like Doordash except for cash. Or perhaps little boxes sprinkled all over the city that let you withdraw from your bank account, like some kind of automatic bank teller but as a machine?

Do you not travel?

Not everyday, no. I usually only travel for business or pleasure.

On the phone with a client that owes you money and expect them to show up at your office with cash?

I've mailed out about 60 checks this year. I've been getting a lot of construction done on my house and that's how the contractors get paid.

Never had to deal with a shortage in a register?

Or chargebacks. Or a down processing network.

I mean you can't understand why people don't like knocking on doors asking for payment>

I had no idea that the state of the U.S. Postal Service has gotten to this point. Stamps are what, like $8 now?

IDK where you get % of your income to credit card companies from, they make more money off interchange than interest

Interchange fees work out to a few percent in the majority of transactions.

Re:cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[DogDude]

Cashless payment fees are usually less than a percent - cheaper than handling cash.

False.
Credit cards cost about 3%, not 1%, which is much more than the cost of handling cash.

Re:cashless transactions == tax on stupidity

[dcw3]

There is always a middle man taking a cut of an electronic transaction.

The cut for electronic transaction is smaller than the cut for cash. Cash requires sorting, counting, transporting, and takes more time at the cash register.

Please explain why merchants will charge you 3% more for credit transactions then.

The end of private spending

[golgotha007]

It's also important to note that governments want this, too. They used to just have visibility on big number transactions but once all cash is gone, they'll be able to monitor every transaction, no matter how small. The concept of anonymous transactions and spending privacy will be soon be over.

When you make the transaction frictionless....

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the following Ted talk - when you make the transaction frictionless, they've found you spend more

When money isn’t real: the $10,000 experiment | Adam Carroll | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VB39Jo8mAQ

Re:When you make the transaction frictionless....

[b0s0z0ku]

Exactly -- spending money SHOULD hurt like fuck. That way, people spend less money on frivolous shit they don't need anyway. Resist, drop out, buy used on Craigslist. Become part of the average perpetual-growth ecahhhhnamist's worst nightmares.

The cashless society is a mistake

[Petersko]

The cashless society is only of interest to that portion of the population with absolutely nothing to hide. And I donâ(TM)t trust those people even a little bit.

No way to buy some mushrooms or hash... no hiding your hotel tryst from your spouse... no way to hide your alcohol abuse from your insurance company... if there isnâ(TM)t something you want to hide from prying eyes youâ(TM)re living life wrong.

World View

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone only sees the world they want to see. I became a landlord a few years ago. It opened my eyes to the amount and types of people who don't or can't get debit or credit cards and that's ignoring all of the people who can't handling having a credit line. I would have otherwise never learned this type of information about people and would have continually falsely believed people had access to the same resources I had. How many random people do you go around asking about their financial history?

The metric they're measuring is total cash transactions. That's doesn't include enough information to be useful. Is that 30% of the population only using cash or 1% only using cash and 29% sometimes using it? Perhaps that 70% are only buying a couple things at a time over and over where as the 30% cash purchases are buying two weeks worth of items at a time. Perhaps the majority of the cashless transaction are in cities. Etc... People will fill in the missing details with whatever they prefer to assume which makes all further claims dangerous to make decisions on.

Personally I use cash at toll booths, bi-weekly on Craigslist, paying a friend / splitting costs, when the card readers aren't working, and when any total ends up matching an exact bill such as a $20. And sometimes I randomly pay in two dollar bills to screw with people.

Cashless comes with an additional 5% Bank TAX

[tanstaaf1]

Talk about what the banks don't want you to even think about: Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%. The conversion to cashless isn't being done to help the citizen, that is for sure. Help the consumer out of their money and their privacy? Of course. Control the consumer? Absolutely. And the dumber than dumb Millennial generation can't put two brain cells together to figure it out. Cui bono?

Smug

[hedge00]

Why does this columnist seem so damn smug about the prospect of losing a convenient payment option that has no middleman taking a cut?

Prediction fail

[Kohath]

Here's how you predict things correctly:

1. Start with things as they are
2. Predict they will change only a little.

That's how you get correct predictions. Nobody wants to publish them though.

The big changes that would be interesting enough to publish in an article are too few. You won't guess them.

The fun of a cashless world

[AHuxley]

Your CC comes with a new political code of conduct.
Any gov assistance program gets a new long no buy list.
No gambling, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking.
A bank account will be needed.
Detection of illegal migrants and other criminals trying to use a fake ID.
Social media use gets linked back to a cashless account and all spending is tracked.
Cash gave a person the spending power to enjoy freedoms away from big gov and the politics of a bank, CC. A cashless world returns all spending to a bank, CC.
Buy the wrong book? The wrong comment on an ISP account linked to your a cashless account?

Navie at Best, so Just Say No!

[SemperOSS]

I will give this guy the benefit of doubt and just label him naive.

There are so many reasons for having cash, from simple convenience to privacy. I like the fact that I can literally throw money on the counter/table if I am in a hurry (has happened a few times in my life).

Also, it will be the end of most beggars, I believe, as I cannot see them accepting card payments soon (Thank you kind Ma'am, would you like a receipt?). Similarly for sellers of The Big Issue (a UK magazine sold by homeless people). A lot of other charity will be stopped dead in its tracks when people cannot just grab some money and give it in a quick transaction. What about the big tanks in the airports where people can leave money for charities, can anybody imagine those replaced with card readers? Me neither.

As other have said, we are walking into the ultimate surveillance society where no transaction goes unregistered, which obviously is the card companies', the tax man's, the police's, the intelligence communities' and the government's wet dream.

Just say NO!

Police will have an easy job

[DNS-and-BIND]

As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.

That's the good part of police states. Petty crime virtually disappears. The bad part is that the definition of "crime" expands so far as to encompass anyone who does something the rulers don't like. We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public. It's a new, terrifying level of control and since corporations control it instead of government, it's doing a nice job of boiling the frog.

Re:Police will have an easy job

[Cro Magnon]

If the government and businesses are working together, not that much different.

Re:Police will have an easy job

[cascadingstylesheet]

We're already seeing people being denied financial services like Paypal, Patreon, and even bank accounts simply because they speak their opinions in public.

Meaning specific companies have decided not to do business with a specific customer, or the government has decided that a person is not allowed to have a bank account? Because those are very different things.

"Citizen committees" with baseball bats and armed government agents are very different things too, in theory ... just not always in practice.

Re:Police will have an easy job

[cascadingstylesheet]

As soon as "cashless" becomes a reality, police won't have to lift a finger to arrest anyone accused of a crime. They'll just turn off his phone. The suspect will turn himself in to avoid starvation.

Yes because "cashless" is an all encompassing word that not only hands police powers they don't have,

They don't? They already freeze bank accounts.

but also implies the specific solution to replace cash is to use a phone,

The pocket computer than approximately everyone carries, and that people are already using for digital cash? Yeah, that's just crazy talk (and also not super relevant to his point, but whatever)

and naturally why would you stop there when you could just add a slippery slope fallacy to properly round out your post.

The slope we are already tobogganing down ... hitting the odd "deplatforming" tree on the way ...

Re:Police will have an easy job

[DNS-and-BIND]

Mao's China pretty much eliminated crime. That legacy continues today; China is one of the safest countries on the planet. They're installing face recognition cameras everywhere to ensure this stays. The new police state will be unlike anything the world has ever seen; it will have the capability to watch everyone, all the time. Anyone who goes off the grid will be immediately suspicious. Being able to escape surveillance will be a great privilege, held only by our rulers and as a reward for their helpers.

Re:Depends on how you define "world"

[Darinbob]

When I grew up the rule of thumb (and sometimes store policy) was no credit cards for anything under $20. So fast food restaurants, ice cream stores, a quick run to the drug store. If you balance your accounts, or try to keep a budget, getting paperwork for each and every misc purchase is a lot of work.

Re: Cash is king

[Anonymous Coward]

Was chatting to a hotel manager the other day about Expedia. She told me they often wait up to 3 months after the customer has been and gone to get paid for the stay.

We're already there in some parts of the world.

[Rmorph]

I live in Norway. I haven't touched cash in about 4 years - and that was on a trip to America. Hand on my heart I havent been in a single situation where cash was required. We still keep 500 kroner (60 dollars?) in a drawer for home emergencies - but we've never had to use it. MY 2 year old daughter will never see cash. Even in her birthday cards - she has a bank account and when the time comes for her to spend money she'll have a mobile phone.

Re:We're already there in some parts of the world.

[wonkavader]

This is because you are not going to poor areas to eat. Half my favorite restaurants are cash only. The clientele is almost entirely non-white. Credit cards cost the business ~2% (lower % with higher monthly and other fees, or higher percent with no startup/monthly fees -- When you see these little businesses with the square card readers on a tablet -- those guys are paying 2.75% of everything they make to a company named "Square"). You don't notice this 2% tax on everything you do. People who are just barely getting by DO, and they favor cash-only businesses which are cheaper.

This is not a state-run cash-less financial system we're talking about here -- It's a for-profit model where the populace voluntarily pays for the convenience. When you talk about a cash-less society in the US, you're talking about a new 2% regressive tax on poor people, where the money doesn't even go into state/communal coffers.

This is similar to the healthcare situation. We have no full-coverage state healthcare because companies make money on healthcare, and they buy politicians to make sure that doesn't change.

If we brought in meaningful campaign finance reform, some politician would say "hey -- we could make a state-run credit card and collect that regressive tax ourselves. We could make it lower than 2% and collect that for the state. Retailers would dump the commercial systems in a heartbeat to get the better rate. We could use the force of the treasury department (who use guns/judges/prisons) to cut down fraud in a way the private companies never could and therefore make the system even more profitable and use that money on schools, roads, etc." OVERNIGHT, these articles would change from CASH-IS-BAD to STATE-MONEY-SYSTEMS-ARE-BAD because these articles are paid for by the credit-card companies.

But don't worry, that will never happen, because we will never have meaningful campaign finance reform. Politicians need the big donors to get elected, and so will do what they are told.

What about the disenfranchised?

[maddog42]

I frequently give some spare change to the homeless or the sub-saharans that are selling tissues at the traffic circles. They likely don't even have a presence in the digital world and probably can't get one...

Re:What about the disenfranchised?

[ThosLives]

Yes - to go fully cashless, society would have to first put in place the infrastructure necessary to guarantee everyone can have a bankable account and the tools to access it, regardless of address or education level or whatever, and deal with age (are we going to issue infants accounts at birth so Grandma can deposit gifts?).

I am cynical that this is possible - we have enough trouble providing universal <service> as it is, let alone guaranteeing universal banking.

Cash transactions == tax by another name

[orlanz]

I don't understand why people think I want to stop by a bank/ATM every once in a while. With cashless, I go there twice a year and feel both trips are a waste of time.

15 years ago, I had to stop by the Elec office to pay my monthly bill. I though it was asasine then that I had to not only pay for my time but also the teller to... what basically amounted to paper shuffling and database entries.

Cashless saves me a TON of time and money; and not just at the check out counter. I got better things to do with my time... like doze off in my backyard.

And we pay middlemen for everything and everywhere. That cashier, elec company teller, toll booth collector, parking attendant, water meter readers, lawn services sales guy, L1 customer support, etc. These are all labor units that are no different than any middleman.

PS: And I fully support Philadelphia's accept cash initiative. Because some members of our society can't go cashless for whatever reasons. And I believe it is the responsibility of any incorporated authority to provide for all of its resident's needs. This is on top of the legalities that cash is the tender for debt in the US. Don't like those points; go set up shop in an unincorporated area.

Cashless == paperless.

[AnotherBlackHat]

At best we'll reach a "cashless" society in the same way we've reached a "paperless" office.

Cash will diminish, sure. But end?
What about kids? Are they going to start getting debit cards? Or will they just not be allowed to buy anything in this brave new world?
Lot's of people don't have bank accounts. What about them?

You don't replace one technology with another unless it's better in every way.
If the new is only better in most ways, then it's only going to mostly replace the old.

I worked in Fast Food

[rsilvergun]

and would have loved cashless. Every store I worked at had been robbed at least once while I worked there. I avoided it by sheer dumb luck. The owner of one chain used to keep their lobby's open 24/7 until somebody got pistol whipped. They didn't close them until the cops got fed up and said they'd press negligence charges on the owner the next time somebody got hurt.

What I'm saying is cash isn't free to a business. There are costs involved. The businesses dropping cash aren't doing it to be hip or because they drunk kool-aid. They're doing it because the costs are now higher than the alternatives.

And if it bother's you that much just do Postal Banking with government issued cards. Have the gov't issue gift card like devices if being traced bugs you. But I've said this before, being tracked should be low on your list of worries in a world like ours. If you're American you've got Health Care, jobs, climate change and the 8 wars we're fighting. Tracking is a symptom of oppression, not the cause. Focus on the systemic issues that oppress you.