Cashless Society

A Cashless Society

The history of Cash:

“Money is the most important abstraction human beings have ever devised.” Glenn Zorpette proposes in her article The Beginning and End of Cash.3

Before the invention of cash people traded goods; this was called barter. Barter means to exchange goods without the use of money. This worked for a community who didn’t need to trade many items; when items more than wheat and goats were present many issues became present. Soon someone came up with a better idea, which later earned the name of money. This person thought that it would be better to find an item that everyone deemed worthy of having; this could be used to buy anything.4

Before coins metal was weighed to discern it’s value. For this to develop banking had to be invented and Johnny Acton mentions this in his article.4

The first banks were held in royal palaces, warehouses and temples; these were well-guarded places so they were considered ideal for storing goods.

In 600 B.C. the first coins were created in Lydia, Asia. The coins were made from electrum (a mixture of gold and silver) and were stamped with pictures. This spread worldwide and some places developed the idea and created paper money. By the 1700’s paper currency was worldwide.

When the worldwide web was invented in 1990 banking made massive progressions; online banking, debit and credit cards- cheques were soon disregarded.

The future of cash:

Technological advances have made the dream of a cashless society a possible reality. The idea of a cashless society is one in which all purchases will be made online/digitally. The need for cash is declining as the amount of alternatives to it rise; from cheques to pay pass, EFTPOS, direct debit, B-Pay, Lay-by, credit and even bitcoins (a digital currency). The Reserve Bank of Australia reinforces the idea with the statistics of ATM Cash Withdrawals. The total number of ATM cash withdrawals has gone from 70829 in March 2012 to 54830 in...