COVID-19 shouldn't kill cash!

On a society-wide basis, say some security experts, cashless systems hinder the production of black money, limiting corruption. Arguably, though, this underestimates the cunning of financial criminals, who will always find ways to commit theft and fraud.

The fact that cyber-security is now an £8.3 billion industry in the UK alone - up by 46% since 2017 - is testament to the capacity of criminals to adapt to new technologies.

There are a number of other ways in which moving to a fully cashless financial system might well do more harm than good.

Data Breaches

Whenever you make a cashless payment, information about you becomes available to the business in question. This includes not only data about the specific purchase you've made, but often also your account number, phone and address details and more.

As with all electronically generated and stored data, there is no guarantee against hacking by criminals, or the loss or compromise of your data by the business in question.

Outages

Technical problems like internet or phone network outages have from to time left many people stranded, without access to their own funds. In March 2020, four of the UK's largest phone service providers went down for five hours. Millions of people were unable to make payments while working from home during the first Covid-19 lockdown. This is just one of many such instances.

Fees

Some banks, businesses and other institutions charge a fee for digital transactions. This despite the fact that they encourage people to go cashless because they say it cuts costs, on activities like counting cash.

Digital Debt

If we continue to move quickly toward a completely cashless society, levels of personal debt will almost certainly rise.