Before city bus cards, there was cash. Then cashless was made mandatory, but possible to prepay with cash anonymously. Then the anonymity was forbidden.
And yes, cash is disappearing for various reasons. You can’t for example charge an EV with cash. One ICE cars are gone you won’t be able to travel and pay with cash. But cash is disappearing in part because people don’t want to use it. The less people use cash the less sense does it make to add infrastructure for it. For example for a public car charger to accept cash you wold have to place cash and coin slots on them, they would have to hold cash which is a security risk and someone would have to travel to collect it which would increase the costs. It’s not all some sinister plot to track people. Governments actually understand that cash offers resilience, especially in EU where most of the cashless infrastructure still depends on US companies.
There doesn’t have to be a sinister plot for the result - mandatory, ubiquitous tracking and bank commisions in the middle - to be real and problematic, is what I’m saying. The governments have all the resources they need to make it possible to pay with cash anywhere you go, but the trajectory they choose is the opposite. Regarding the costs, I think IT and integration work required for cashless payments are an order of magnitude costlier than cash and coin slots, because of the telecom equipment, data centers and IT professionals working on it.
Before city bus cards, there was cash. Then cashless was made mandatory, but possible to prepay with cash anonymously. Then the anonymity was forbidden.
Yes, now it makes sense.
And yes, cash is disappearing for various reasons. You can’t for example charge an EV with cash. One ICE cars are gone you won’t be able to travel and pay with cash. But cash is disappearing in part because people don’t want to use it. The less people use cash the less sense does it make to add infrastructure for it. For example for a public car charger to accept cash you wold have to place cash and coin slots on them, they would have to hold cash which is a security risk and someone would have to travel to collect it which would increase the costs. It’s not all some sinister plot to track people. Governments actually understand that cash offers resilience, especially in EU where most of the cashless infrastructure still depends on US companies.
There doesn’t have to be a sinister plot for the result - mandatory, ubiquitous tracking and bank commisions in the middle - to be real and problematic, is what I’m saying. The governments have all the resources they need to make it possible to pay with cash anywhere you go, but the trajectory they choose is the opposite. Regarding the costs, I think IT and integration work required for cashless payments are an order of magnitude costlier than cash and coin slots, because of the telecom equipment, data centers and IT professionals working on it.