Pros And Cons Of Being Cashless

Don’t focus on making money, instead; focus on making sense out of money.

The aforementioned line – a self-quote – best describes my education pursuits. My interest in global economy, digitalization and human outreach merge together in what can be described as a momentous occasion for the human race: the onset of a cashless economy.

Cashless economy – a theory which is slowly escaping from blackboards into the real world – has a very basic premise: in today’s age of urbanization, the pros for the need of physical currency (cash and coins) are clearly outweighed by the cons of it.

If you were to shoot out a few vices that cripple global development of the top your head, terrorism, drug trade and human trafficking would certainly place themselves on the podium. Like any statistics nerd, I placed them in a Venn diagram, and realized that the zone of intersection was use of cash for

Cashlessness seems to be a luxury of the develop-ed and just a distant dream for the develop-ing. Growing up in India, a country where two-thirds of her population lives on less than a dollar a day, I have come to realize that the biggest economic battles are not fought on Wall Street, but instead on the streets and alleys of the maturing “Second World.” The lack of technological bandwidth is the first obvious hindrance, and in a potential market of 1.2 billion as in India, understanding the Asian market is imperative to truly implement the system. Worse however, is the mental roadblock that has to be overcome. In fragile political systems, hard cash is the only liquid fallback, and this reliance is often ingrained in the DNA of the proletariat. On the other hand, the bitcoin – the virtual currency we have started to accept – is rapidly gaining popularity on the wrong side of the law for the same reasons as hard cash: complete