The country's first automatic cash machine was inaugurated in July 1967, only a week after the world's very first one was opened in London. And the development and simplification of payments has evolved greatly ever since. Now, Sweden is leading the way towards the cashless society.
Close to cashless
Based on this combination of factors, Norway has the lowest cash reliant index score (1.54), followed by Finland (1.87), New Zealand (2.06), Hong Kong and Sweden (2.10), Denmark (2.15), Switzerland (2.21), the UK (2.22), Singapore (2.32) and the Netherlands (2.46).
Many experts believe the conclusion of cash will happen as early as 2024. There are many reasons for this shift – here we will discuss just a few of them. One of the biggest factors driving Australia towards a cashless future is the growth of online and mobile payments.
India, which is driving the global digital economy, has already clocked about 70 billion digital payment transactions in 2022—the highest in the world. This is a sharp increase from the corresponding figure of 44 billion in 2021, according to data collation portal Statista.
More Than Six in 10 Predict a Cashless Society
Sixty-four percent of Americans say it is "very likely" or "likely" that the U.S. will be a cashless society at some point during their lives; meaning all transactions are done using an electronic method of payment rather than physical currency.
The Bottom Line
While the argument for the move is that these large bills aid in financial crime and terrorism, the ulterior motive may be to make it harder for banks and consumers to avoid negative interest rates by holding on to actual money.
A Nation Without Cash: Norway's the First Country to Go Cash Free — Business Today Online Journal.
The UK is still 'far from being a cashless society'
“Our analysis shows the UK is far from being a cashless society, as mostly older generations continue to use ATMs frequently, whereas younger people living in London are the most likely to go out with a thinner wallet.”
Australians are ditching cash at the fastest rate in history as contactless payments and the boom of buy-now-pay-later methods threaten to radically reduce the use of physical money.
Lower paper money usage eases fraud detection in banks. Governments are very interested in the cashless society as well. Non-cash transactions are registered in banks, so a government can receive data on the economic habits of society.
A cashless society is a society where all physical money (cash, checks and coins) is completely and totally replaced by digital currency—and that includes replacing debit and credit cards too.
China is fast becoming one of the most cashless societies in the world, fueled by the rise of dominant fintech platforms like Tencent's WeChat Pay and Alibaba's Alipay.
The big takeaway: Banks are pushing for a cashless society, mostly because they would benefit from having full control over consumers' financial lives. But a cashless society won't happen overnight—if ever.
However, the history of cashless transactions stretches back much further than this, with the Mesopotamians creating a cashless barter system a mindblowing 8000 years ago. Today, cash is increasingly losing ground to plastic, electronic payment methods, and cryptocurrencies.
The world's top 20 countries reliant on cash in 2022
According to the research, Morocco is leading the way when it comes to cash payments in 2022.
U.S. paper money is the official currency in a number of countries and areas outside of the territorial United States. These countries include Ecuador, El Salvador, Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste, Micronesia, Palau, and The Marshall Islands.
Ultimately, cash may in fact disappear. But it's mostly a question of where and when. While it may disappear in some countries, it might remain in others. And if it ultimately happens in 50 or 100 or more years, it won't matter much to anyone who's alive today.
Yes, this topic is very relevant to this generation because nowadays most people can do there all their work by online payment so all that people are doing and follow a cashless way.
In China, cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. In this video, see how Alipay and WeChat Pay have become the mainstream mode of payment transactions in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where people generally do not use cash for their daily activities at all.
The short answer is inflation. Historically, when countries have simply printed money it leads to periods of rising prices — there's too many resources chasing too few goods. Often, this means every day goods become unaffordable for ordinary citizens as the wages they earn quickly become worthless.
There is now a broad swath of terms that financial institutions and fintechs coined to describe new self-service banking technologies: ITMs, video tellers, IBKs, PTMs, VTMs, self-service kiosks, self-service technologies.
Debit cards and electronic transfers are replacing physical money, leading to a system where governments, banks, businesses, and people transfer funds by having a third party change numbers on the equivalent of an electronic ledger.