The coronavirus pandemic has left Italy’s economy in a bad state, with the latest predictions foreseeing a -9% in GDP in 2020. At the same time, the online economy has limited the fall, leading to a +15% in the use of contactless payments and +80% of mobile payments compared to 2019. For the first time, Italy’s historic resistance to electronic transactions might be at a turning point. This is one of the reasons behind the country’s government decision to draft a plan in the direction of a ‘cashless society’, which is also meant to counter undeclared economic activity and tax evasion - a...
Anyone can use cash to transact – important in a country where one in five people do not have a bank account (Finscope, 2018). Cash doesn’t discriminate according to whether you own a smartphone, can get a card from a nearby banking branch or have an ID book for a FICA or Know Your Customer process. It allows immediate participation in the economy for all. According to the PYMNTS Global Cash Index™ South Africa Analysis, more than 50 percent of consumer transactions are completed with notes and coins. With around R135 billion in cash circulating in the economy and millions of unbanked...
They said digital payments would defeat criminals, terrorists and money launderers but the opposite has turned out to be true. Money laundering through banks, hackers blackmailing legitimate listed companies for cryptocurrency payoffs and regular outages by my bank’s Eftpos system show cash may be our last bulwark against the crims and the thieves. Card companies and banks implied that cash was unsafe at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but it turns out that cards maybe dirtier than cash. Scott Morrison’s government proposes to ban cash transactions over $10,000. T Our right to...
Rwandan banks are reducing the number of ATMs across the country with some opting to roll out agency banking instead. According to the latest statistics from the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy and Financial Stability Statement, banks are reducing the number of ATMs and instead increasing agency banking rollout. With that, the number of ATMs in the country reduced to 331 as of June this year from 390 in June 2019. Agency banking is a model of availing limited scale banking and financial services through engaged agents under an agency agreement with the owner of an outlet who conducts...
In times of crisis, they say cash is the king. Perhaps, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) justification for the increased cash intensity in the economy in the previous year is built on this premise. In its annual report for 2019-20 published last week, the central bank said the year ended with a surge in pandemic-related ‘rush to cash’. It noted that the currency-GDP ratio increased to pre-demonetisation level of 12 per cent in 2019-20 from 11.3 per cent a year ago. The RBI said the rise in cash-intensity in the economy indicated a response to the pandemic which reflected in the form of a...
DAVID Mundell is worried the UK is “sleepwalking into a cashless society”. The Tweeddale MP, of the Conservatives, has spoken in the House of Commons about his concerns that cash is falling out of use. And in his latest column in the Peeblesshire News, Mr Mundell warns of the “real danger” that physical money could soon disappear, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr Mundell writes: “There is a real danger that the vital cash payments system in the UK could be lost through the backdoor as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.” AD The former Scottish Secretary says any health...
New Global Payment Trends research reveals that a decline in cash use during the pandemic could leave 43.6 million adults vulnerable to digital exclusion in the US. Although it’s still the second-most used form of payment in the US, cash use has seen a significant decline over the last five years, with 29% of adults now saying they make no purchases using cash during a typical week, compared to 24% in 2015. This decline could be exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen the country under lockdown restrictions since March. This has led to many Americans panic-withdrawing...
Most Australians do not want cash to vanish despite coronavirus speeding up the trend towards a cashless society. A survey for Tasmanian-based MyState Bank suggested about 70 per cent of Australians wanted cash retained. MyState Bank said the research showed the pandemic and concerns about health risks had accelerated a shift to what it described as a "less cash" society. It found 68 per cent of Australians were using less cash since the outbreak. Read more
Within days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia, most shops began eschewing cash, with a preference for cards. And here’s the thing – most of us quickly complied. Recently, banking experts have said that over the 12 weeks or so that the pandemic was at a crisis point across the nation, the digital banking revolution sped up rapidly, by about five years. And there were two reasons why: Firstly, the fact that cash became unacceptable currency almost overnight. And secondly, the effect of a psychological shift, particularly amongst people who were not previously avid users of technology, who...
Globally, countries are experiencing a rapid expansion of digitisation and technological advancements that touch on nearly all aspects of life. In general, the surge in digitisation has improved operational efficiency and service delivery in all the key sectors of public and commercial importance – from manufacturing and industry, to business and commercial operations, agriculture, health, education and finance. Where the debate does exist, it highlights the growing tension between an evolving consumer payments landscape, a desire for increased business efficiency, and a growing concern...
