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Will cash be phased out?
- Thread starter MrDawn
- Start date
We are not even talking about cash being phased out with the way technology is going now. Wth people being able to shop through biometrics authentication, we are talking about physical cards being phased out.
I certainly hope it isn't. Anything can be hacked, it puts you more at risk. Also it's annoying when you go somewhere and their system is down so you can't even pay with cash because they either don't take it or never came up with a backup plan...
I don’t see cash disappearing either, and there really isn’t any major push to eliminate it outright. A lot of people get caught up in the digital‑currency conversation, but that’s a totally different issue from whether you can still hand someone a $20 bill for coffee or buy something second‑hand with cash.
What is changing is how often people actually carry cash and how many small businesses want to deal with it. Digital wallets are incredibly convenient, and they’re also a lot harder to steal than a physical wallet. On the business side, especially for small shops, cash comes with headaches; counterfeit bills, counting errors, theft (both external and internal), and the time/risk it takes to manage it. Digital payments cut most of that out.
So no, I don’t think cash is going away. But I do think we’ll see more situations where the local food truck, pop‑up vendor, or tiny shop just isn’t set up for cash anymore because it’s simpler and safer for them to go all‑digital.
What is changing is how often people actually carry cash and how many small businesses want to deal with it. Digital wallets are incredibly convenient, and they’re also a lot harder to steal than a physical wallet. On the business side, especially for small shops, cash comes with headaches; counterfeit bills, counting errors, theft (both external and internal), and the time/risk it takes to manage it. Digital payments cut most of that out.
So no, I don’t think cash is going away. But I do think we’ll see more situations where the local food truck, pop‑up vendor, or tiny shop just isn’t set up for cash anymore because it’s simpler and safer for them to go all‑digital.
Is it though? If I have cash in my house, you have to physically break in. Digital wallets are easy for thieves to phish or socially engineer to access the account.
Maybe, but I’d be careful with how that argument is framed. A lot of the data around “digital theft” includes scams, fraudulent transfers, and social-engineering attacks that work because people have bank accounts and payment apps; not because digital wallets are easy to break into.
A locked phone with Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or Samsung Wallet is a much harder target unless they also have the passcode, biometric access, account credentials, or the ability to trick the victim into authorizing a transfer. Not to mention many of these result in reimbursement from the service.
That’s why it’s misleading to frame “a digital wallet in your pocket” as automatically less secure than cash. A lot of the fraud being counted is people being scammed into sending money through Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, bank transfer, or similar services. Those scams can hit people whether they usually pay with cash or digital and they are done with or without digital wallets.
You could argue that someone who only uses cash and has no bank account is hardened against certain online scams, but that comes with a different set of risks.
