IMAGINE a world without cash. A world where you’d never see your kids’ faces light up as you hand them a crisp fiver for their weekly pocket money.
A world where you’d no longer be able to reach into your pocket and grab a fistful of coins for the homeless man who gives you a smile on your morning commute.
A world where you couldn’t promise to give a neighbourly teen a £20 note if she babysits for you.
A world where every monetary transaction would be digitised, meaning handymen could never again ask for cash in hand, waitresses would have to rely on management for tips and older people who like to keep coins in jars and their weekly budget in their purses would be forced to become whizzes at PINs and contactless shopping.
Such a world, such a cashless, mechanised dystopia, might not be far off.
Nothing will be private
If big credit and debit card firms get their way, the era of brass, silver and paper might soon end.
And I think we will all lose out as a result.
Never actually seeing what we’re spending would give us less control over our financial lives.
This week Visa declared war on cash. It will “put cash out of business”, boasted the company’s chief executive, Al Kelly.
Its plan is to encourage shops and restaurants to stop taking coins and notes and only accept the tap or swipe of a card or mobile phone.
Visa is promising retail outlets free use of contactless technology if they promise to turn their noses up at old-fashioned dosh.
UK retailers splash £800million a year on transaction fees for card payments — so Visa’s offer to slash these fees for those who join their jihad against cash is a big deal.
Some say it’s bribery. James Daley of the consumer group Fairer Finance accuses Visa of “bribing companies to stop using cash”.
Visa will be one of the big winners in a cash-free brave new world where every purchase we little people make — whether it’s grabbing a morning latte or investing in a plasma TV — will have to go through the debit and credit card overlords. But the rest of us could lose out. In a big way.
Handling money, storing coins, counting out notes from the piggy bank. . . this is how many of us learn about the value of things and how to avoid being spendthrifts.
For the young and the old in particular, cash is often still king.
Pocket money is a great way for kids to learn about budgeting. If a 12-year-old gets a tenner every week, he or she will learn how this unit of cash breaks down.
They’ll find out that it won’t get them everything they want. That when it’s gone, it’s gone, and that some thought is required to make it last to the following week. More entrepreneurial youths are often driven by the desire for cash.
In my early teens, I delivered leaflets, cleaned cars and did some altar-boy serving at weddings (the bride’s father would always slip you a five-spot for that), all with an eye for making cash.
Nothing beat that feeling of having a jar full of notes and coins. It made you feel like a grown-up. In fact, it made you grow up.
Many older people also prefer the feel of cash, the manageability of cash, over the ethereal world of digitised dosh.
My mum isn’t the only sixty- something who likes to withdraw her weekly budget from a cashpoint and keep it in her purse.
There, she can see it and feel it.
Super-wealthy Visa bosses might not understand this but for many people, seeing the blues and browns of the bread in your wallet makes you feel in control.
Indeed, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when you use cash, pain receptors in your brain effectively say: “Dude, don’t over- indulge.” But this doesn’t happen when you use cards.
Handing over cash makes us stop and think about what we’re doing, but tapping a card doesn’t.
Could this be why the likes of Visa loathe cash — because they know we will spend more with plastic?
In between the young and the old, there are huge numbers of workers for whom cash is still the preferred way of life. Handymen, market traders, small businesses, cornershops — they all deal in paper.
Then there’s the potentially authoritarian consequences of the drive to “put cash out of business”.
If every transaction must be virtual, nothing we do will ever be truly private.
Red-faced squirming
They will have a beady eye on everything we buy. Secret Valentine’s gifts, emergency trips to the chemist or sneakily spending more on your mates’ night out than you let on to your loved one will become a thing of the past. Every buy will be logged, recorded and posted out in a statement.
Just think of the mass of data they will hold about each and every one of us, and who they could sell it to.
Cash offers anonymity. A world of plastic-only payment throws our lives open to the disapproving tuts of suits in credit card offices.
Finally, there’s the small matter of technology failing. Imagine your bank is hacked or Tesco’s records are leaked.
Or imagine if the restaurant in which you’re trying to impress a new beau or belle experiences an internet meltdown.
How do you pay? How do you resolve your red-faced squirming?
Here’s a radical idea: People should get to choose whether to use plastic or cash. Visa shouldn’t get to dictate how we spend.
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