Topic: China Can’t Afford a Cashless Society (Perhaps No One Can) - page 3. (Read 407 times)

Yes its not easy to turn such a big populous country in to cashless society and India too is struggling to do such thing.Its very difficult to change people's mindset immediately to leave traditional currencies and switch to digital cashless transactions and there are still huge volume of illiterate people and also older aged people who feel comfortable in staying with traditional fiat currencies.

Going cashless is still on its early stage. Right now, China, I think, is the only country who is actively promoting it although there are already countries who are now rapidly transitioning to it. It may still have flaws and issues right now and I am guessing when currency was first introduced centuries ago, there were also issues too. Same with checks and the like. Only time will really tell if going cashless will be really successful in a global level.

You see them flying.

I'm referring to everything happening China and then mainly the lower class, that's what this thread is about, not the western world. Neither am I referring to external elements such as quality and comfort of life.

This is the best time to lift these people out of their economical exclusion, and as I said before, it's beneficial for the economy as a whole, so what's holding the government back to step in? Turn the unbanked into the banked and in a matter of years you'll see how significant the economical boost is. If the government isn't doing it, these people will remain unbanked for plenty of more years. That even reeks of intentional suppression.

The use of cash along with other payments is necessary. Not every place is well developed to use payments on smartphone devices. Even in developed countries like the US or European countries, cash is still used.

Even we grow more in terms of technology, I can’t still imagine this world without cash because its really convenient to have cash on your wallet. Governmern will not support this cashless society, cryptocurrency is just here to make faster transactions around the world and we should be happy for this kind of technology.

Well,its paying very well isn't it,now that infinite number of dollars are printed and yet the entire world is stuck in a recession. Paper Money shortage means that there's not enough notes in the economy to survive which makes no sense and isn't even a proper term.

We are not in a cashless society. Yeah we use credit cards, paypal,google pay/samsung pay whatever, but paper money runs deep. These digital payments are just a tip of an iceberg. But if this recession keeps going on,cash is gonna get hard to attain, people will only use digital payments and save hard cash, if things become worse,lord forbid.

Unless china forces them to,they won't. China is nutty, but going cashless won't be the best option for now. They know that they are in a bad place right now.

What do you mean by lack of anonymity? Cash was never fully anonymous. There could be different Point of views that you maybe talking from, but going cashless might help people survive this recession shit.

Why exactly? Absolutely vast majority of transactions are already non-cash. All the government needs to do is to make sure everyone is banked, meaning bank (and payment app providers) cannot refuse you as a customer, freeze/terminate your account for no reason.

So the state could do it, but they won't probably for 2 reasons:

- some elderly people have no experience of non-cash technology and it could be to hard for them to switch
- "safety valve", cash is needed for crime (drugs, hookers and alike) and having total control and transparency of people's finance could backfire badly. It's actually healthy to keep some level of non-serious crime and allow people to vent-out.

Until recently, the forum gave an example with China, where people quite actively switch to non-cash forms of payment. Yes, until some time the introduction of non-cash payments is useful and necessary. However, no state can fully switch to non-cash settlements in the near future. Also, no society will be able to switch to using only crypto currency. There will always be all forms of calculation.

OK, the way you phrased it made me think you see existence of the wealth gap as a problem.


My general impression is that vast majority of government stimulations are waste of money, can do more bad than good and are often simply unfair (ie when you take person's A tax money to train and subsidise B, so that B can out-compete A on job market).


You've lost me here completely. Are you honestly not seeing the progress in western world and globally (with few small exemptions) in terms of quality and comfort of life in the past few decades? No more illiteracy, virtually everyone with access to electricity/water/internet/sewer systems, even homeless junkies have smartphones, and the best one: lack of food is no longer a major problem for the poor - excess consumption and obesity is.

Seriously? No improvement?


It boggles my mind why would any shop keeper refuse to take cash. Even if it's small %, that's always a profit. It could have something to do with either security (higher risk of robbery) or, more likely, strict regulations around handling cash (more complex bookkeeping, you have to make occasional trips to the bank to deposit etc), or maybe it's about counterfeit money risk...

Around here some business would give you small discount if you pay cash and don't require receipt

How should the government encourage people to start using only digital method of payments? I think that there are a few ways and each country will do it differently. We can either try educating people (expensive and it doesn't guarantee 100% success since many will simply ignore it) or forcing people by switching over completely to digital cash. It will be much easier to do since smartphones are becoming more and more popular along with cashless payments. The elderly are the biggest problem. Most of them still feel unsafe about modern technology.

A cashless society doesn't mean mobile payment. ATMs, cards are all part of a cashless society. Scriptural money is one of the best examples. Which country doesn't have a single ATM, nobody with a card? Does a country without a scriptural money exist again?
A poor can even use a Payment terminal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43kdAgUFNg

Sweden is close to that:



20 years ago we had problems with mobile coverage away from the capital over a 10 km radius.
Now I'm cursing the mobile company when I only have 3G in the middle of the forest 100 km away from a village 

Times change

I nowhere even mentioned that.

My point basically is that governments should stimulate those who aren't capable of catching up with the economical trends themselves. If you look at how the lower class in economical terms hasn't gone through any sort of improvement throughout the last decades, it's safe to say that it won't ever happen if you wait for it. Don't you think the government should be a stimulating factor here?

It's China that we're talking about, so the group of affected people in terms of numbers is more than what we can even think of right now. Imagine what economical boost the Chinese economy will experience when you get those people to 'rank up' and have them be part of the modern economy.

"Paper money shortage"?  I've never heard that term before, and I think it's a pretty ridiculous concept.  Paper money isn't pegged to gold anymore, so it's not like governments can't just print more.

We're in for a cashless society I think.  I have little doubt about that, and I don't even think it's something governments have to push very hard.  People, from what I've seen, much prefer to use their debit card or smartphone to pay for even the smallest transactions--especially the younger folks.  That article made a good point about the elderly being squeezed out of the economy, but that's a problem that should work itself out with time.  As far ask I know, China has not yet eliminated physical money so those geriatric folks can still spend their paper money.

I don't think Chinese businesses ought to refuse cash payments.  That's nuts in my opinion, but then again China is a nutty society.

As I've said before, I have mixed feelings about going cashless, mainly because of the lack of anonymity with electronic payments.  I don't like that at all.  Plus you're screwed temporarily if you lose your phone or debit card.  It's happened to me when I didn't have cash on hand, and it sucks.

The fact still remains that any country that is campaigning for a complete cashless economy is only living in the world of form as what they are doing is far from reality. There is no way cash can be eradicated. The only thing that can be done is a gradual reduction in it other than the complete one that the Chinese government is going. I remember when such was about to be introduced into the country, it was a gradual one starting from the states that are more populated and focusing on the educated class and two years down the line, some people are still not touched while some citizens don't have any idea of what a cashless economy is all about.

To the people blaming the private sector, I would say its as a result of ignorance. They should channel their energy to the government that came with the policy in which the private sector as law abiding must fall in line if they still want to be in business. The private sector should even be appreciated the more because its on their platforms that they make the transactions possible while government makes the policy, it sometimes fails to put the necessary infrastructures in place to ensure a seamless transition which is what is being witnessed now.

Not accepting cash is of course worng for now, but I guess the shops should simply hold some funds specifically for giving change to people. I am sure they all know the average number of daily customers, average spedning rate and how much of which banknotes is needed to pay them. It looks more like an illusionary problem. Yes, surely cryptos will count as cahless payment here as well.
I don't see the economical problem with fiat here, since people are mainly using wechat for payments and are probably using it for mibile payments in the same Chinese currency. The issue with poor people without smartphones can also be resolved naturally, because I am sure that poor and wealthy people are shopping in different stores anyway.

There will be no cashless society,this is not happening now and forever as virtual money has a limited power and needed internet to access,while paper money is indeed to be in action anytime everytime as it be in need.Japan accepted bitcoin and make it as legal tender but yet they still uses Yen because of this reasons so btter not to expect a cashless society instead expect a combination of this both in future uses

It depends on the context. If the discussion is focusing on the differences in physical and electronic payments from the point of view of people who struggle to use the latter (like the eldery and the poor in this article), then Bitcoin is a part of cashless society. But on the other hand, Bitcoin is not controlled by banks and governments, unlike electronic fiat, it was originally described by Satoshi as electronic cash because he wanted to distinguish it from centralized payment systems, so in this sense Bitcoin is the opposite of cashless society.

The willingness and the eagerness of the society itself to transition from a cash-based society to a cashless society is what's actually hurting the unbanked, not the country or the regulators themselves. Knowing how fast, convenient and secure cashless payments are, it's a no-brainer that most people would opt to use it rather than receive coins and paper that could potentially be stolen and hard to get back. The downside is, some people, especially the unbanked are left behind in this cause; it takes a lot of requirements and financial capacity to get yourself banking services.

it's kinda sad to think that there's nothing we can do to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, and sometimes, compromises hurts all sides of the story, too.

No countrie in the world (even China and USA) can't afford a 100% cashless society,because the implementation would be very expensive.Cashless society means that everyone needs a mobile device or a personal computer.Paper money are still way more convenient.