By 
The cashless movement has sparked an ongoing intense debate by lawmakers, fintech players and consumers situated across opposing realms of reality.
At the forefront, the Swedish is leading the vanguard on all things cashless with legislation kicking in that enables shops to refuse cash payments for the digitally uninitiated.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Americans, ever the advocates of freedom of choice, have made the surprising move to outlaw the inception of cashless stores in cities such as Philadelphia and New Jersey.
PUSHING FOR A CASHLESS SUPER-REGION IN ASIA
Closer to home, we are seeing various initiatives by regional governments to push forward in their pursuit of a cashless super-region.
Back in 2017, the Indian government under the Modi administration has already started to zealously pursue digital payments by setting up a dedicated government ministry to look into and creating dozens of cashless townships where notes and coins are not welcome.
The Vietnamese government, on the other hand, issued plans to launch a cashless system for Vietnamese consumers by 2020, in hopes to reduce cash transactions by 10 percent.
In Singapore, the government has put in place a national e-payments platform, PayNow which enables registered users to make peer-to-peer interbank system transfers seamlessly and instantly. With more than 1.4 million registered users by June 2018, the government has also pledged to further reduce cash withdrawals at automated teller machines and phase out paper checks by 2025.
China leads the pack as its shoppers chalked up a record US$41.5 trillion on their phones in 2018 through both online shopping and in-store expenditure. According to market researcher eMarketer, China outranks all other countries in terms of cashless uptake, with 525 million mobile payment in 2018, with India following closely behind with 73.9 million users.
FINANCIAL INCLUSION
On its face, it is not hard to understand the appeal of cashless payments. One could say that a cashless economy and financial inclusion are basically two sides of the same coin, given that digital inclusion has outpaced financial inclusion across several emerging markets.
More people today hold mobile phones than bank accounts. According to the 2017 Global Findex Database, only 1.2 billion had bank accounts, whilst the GSMA reports that more than 5 billion people had access to mobile phones by Q2 2017.
We could also go one step further to point out how digital finance, which gives the unbanked access to an e-wallet, has also enabled many without a credit or collateral history to borrow credit for the first time using their mobile behavioral data to advance their economic opportunities. The cashless movement has been life-changing for many and is, in this very regard, a worthwhile pursuit.
The introduction of mobile money has enabled millions within the underbanked or underserved populations, particularly across the emerging markets, to finally gain access to credit that could allow them to make transactions without a bank account.
DIGITAL EXCLUSION
However, a cashless economy is not without its drawbacks. It could be said that the virtues of a cashless society can only be truly experienced if its rewards could be shared by all.
For digital payments or virtual currencies to be accepted as legal tender worldwide, a mass digital onboarding of consumers needs to take place where access to digital utilities – mobile devices and the Internet – are treated as universal basic human rights and made available to all. This is however not the case at present.
Short of such provisions, if digital payments were to truly become the mainstream, predominant mode of monetary exchange, it will stand to exclude those who have, for various reasons, not chosen to adopt cashless payments just yet.
Across the technology adoption lifecycle, there are five types of technology consumers – Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards – as identified by author Geoffrey A. Moore in his book “Crossing the Chasm .
The innovators, the early adopters and the early majority are typically the first groups of consumers who recognize the benefit of new technology and are keen to adopt the new solutions.
The late majority are waiting for new technology to become entrenched in mainstream usage before they give it a shot. This group of consumers usually lack confidence in their ability to deal with technology and prefer to purchase technology products from big established corporations.
The technology laggards are the ones who are not seeking to adopt new technology for either personal and/or economic reasons.
To be truly inclusive, a cashless nation would need to accommodate all five groups of people at the same time and not leave behind those who have yet to jump on the digital bandwagon.
IS A CASH-LITE SOCIETY THE PATH FORWARD TO A INCLUSIVE SOCIETY?
On a macro level, the introduction of cashless payments holds the promise of accelerating economic growth by combating negative externalities such as tax evasion and money laundering, which in turn lead to the underestimation of a market’s gross domestic product (GDP).
According to the McKinsey Global Institute[14], the adoption of digital finance could add as much as 6 percent or US$3.7 trillion to the global economy by 2025. This inclusive growth can in turn enable more capital to be redirected towards inclusion initiatives.
For any economy to survive and indeed thrive, consumer confidence is paramount. Just last year, there were still as many as 500 billion banknotes and trillions of coins in circulation[15], which marks a rise in the volume of cash being used as a medium. According to g4s[16], which manages cash distribution systems, cash in circulation relative to GDP has in fact risen to 9.6 per cent across all continents in 2018, up from 8.1 per cent in 2011.
By all indications, cash is still shown to be resiliently holding on to its position and treated upon as a real asset in a digital world.
As a mobile payments technology company, we could extol the virtues of a cashless economy readily. However, the concept of a cashless economy needs to be predicated on a universal contract that negates cash as past legal tender for us to really move forward. This, however could not be simultaneously forced upon all economies undergoing different stages of growth and digital transformation.
Perhaps the path to a cash-lite society would be the more pragmatic option at this point and is certainly one that would be met with lesser resistance. Digital payments and cash could continue to coexist in the near future and that should not be viewed as a glass-half-empty or half-full situation for proponents on either side of the coin.
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