Paper currency being phased out throughout the world

In some places throughout the world, paying with cash is becoming virtually impossible. And though many people in the U.S. are fighting to hold on to cash as a viable payment option, mobile and electronic alternatives are quickly becoming the norm here as well.

A BBC report on Thursday revealed that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to use cash for transactions in places like the Netherlands and many Scandinavian countries.

Take, for example, what the report says about Sweden:

Citing the high costs of handling cash and security concerns, many Swedish stores have already abandoned their cash tills, including telecommunications giant Telia Company, whose 86 shops nationwide stopped accepting cash in 2013. The country’s buses haven’t accepted currency from passengers for years, and even homeless magazine vendors accept card and mobile payments these days.

The problem has become so bad that many of Sweden’s residents, facing the dilemma of what to do with piles of cash that banks don’t want, are even resorting to “hiding it in the microwave,” according to  Björn Eriksson, head of security industry alliance Säkerhetsbranschen.

In the U.S., cash is still widely used. But as banks follow the lead of their international peers and work to deal only in more lucrative electronic transaction options, that is likely to rapidly change.

In addition to banks, the government also has an incentive to make cash less popular with consumers.

As Bob Livingston pointed out at the beginning of the year:

Why are banksters suddenly opposed to cash? There are three reasons (at least): they can’t control or track its use, to prevent people from pulling their money out of banks if negative interest rates (where people pay the bank to hold their cash) are introduced, and to consolidate their power.

Of course, that is not the excuse the banksters use. They claim cash is tool of criminals. In a report  for the Harvard Kennedy School for Business, Peter Sands proposes eliminating “high value currency notes” like $100 bills because, “Such notes are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities, given the anonymity and lack of transaction record they offer, and the relative ease with which they can be transported and moved. By eliminating high denomination, high value notes we would make life harder for those pursuing tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption.”

Learn more about “Why there’s a war on cash…”

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