The expanding use of smartphones to initiate and conduct retail payment combined with a steady migration of transactional engagement to ecommerce platforms over the past several years have a widening number of us anticipating the demise of cash, as in the case of the author of this article.
Money is destined to become digital and this conclusion emerges from its ongoing transition and its liable association to customer behavioral pattern. Money has been since long trotting on the path towards abstraction and looked at in terms of monetary spaces and hierarchies it becomes clear that digital money is not about new forms of money but rather about new ways of executing transactions with existing forms.
The cry of “Cash is Dead” is raised frequently these days, and we at Mercator Advisory Group would concur that a widening segment of consumers are indeed becoming both more comfortable and adept with the digitization of currency. Further, as the author states, the flexibility inherent within digitized currency affords provides us with interesting new ways of structuring payments. However, there is no lack of instances where trust and reliability are in question, and in those situations, Cash remains King. So, while use of cash in our daily lives may be giving ground, it has yet to be definitively removed, and with that in mind, it is safe to say “Long Live Cash”.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Director, Emerging Technologies at Mercator Advisory Group
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