In the War on Cash, Words Count
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“In war, truth is the first casualty” Aeschyllus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC)
The term ‘cashless’ is probably the most obvious illustration of how words are used to undermine the image of cashMoney in physical form such as banknotes and coins. More and has clearly become the buzzword in payments during the past few years. Here are some of the headlines published during the past weeks.
- ‘Moving Towards a Cashless Society In A Cash Reliant World’; Forbes on 18 March 2019
- ‘Retailers want to go cashless. But opponents say that’s discriminatory’; CNN Business 26 March 2019
- ‘Rise in cashless payments stokes concerns over data security’; The Globe and Mail 31 March 2019
- Plastic Winning in Cash V Cashless; Bloomberg 29 March 2019.
But what does cashless actually mean?
Shops are going cashless when they cease to accept cash. Digital payments are cashless. And countries are adopting strategies to become cashless. Anti-cash campaigners would like us to believe that the adoption of everything digital – commerce, banking, identity and of course payments – is inevitably related to the disappearance of cash. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bank For International Settlements showed in its quarterly report dated March 2018, that cash in circulationThe value (or number of units) of the banknotes and coins in circulation within an economy. Cash in circulation is included in the M1 monetary aggregate and comprises only the banknotes and coins in circulation outside the Monetary Financial Institutions (MFI), as stated in the consolidated balance sheet of the MFIs, which means that the cash issued and held by the MFIs has been subtracted (“cash reserves”). Cash in circulation does not include the balance of the central bank’s own banknot... More had grown from 7% of GDP in 2000 to 9% in 2016 in Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) member countries, with the largest increases being recorded in Hong Kong and Japan (by 9% and 7% of GDP, respectively).
The term cashless is so misleading that it has led to another neologism: ‘less -cash’. Kenneth Rogoff , author of “The Curse of Cash” claimed that his message had been misinterpreted: “I favor a less-cash society, absolutely not a cashless society, because I think there are issues of privacy, having robustness to power outages is very important.”
But less-cash is just as meaningless. Less cash than what? And who decides what is the right level of cash in society?
You say hoardingThe term refers to the use of cash as a store of value. However, the term has a negative connotation of concealment, and is often used in the context of the war on cash. See Precautionary Holdings. More; I say saving
‘Hoarding’ is another term which contributes in damaging the image of cash. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of to hoard is “to collect and often hide away a supply of : to accumulate a hoard.“ In other terms, hoarding represents one of the core functions of moneyFrom the Latin word moneta, nickname that was given by Romans to the goddess Juno because there was a minting workshop next to her temple. Money is any item that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular region, country or socio-economic context. Its onset dates back to the origins of humanity and its physical representation has taken on very varied forms until the appearance of metal coins. The banknote, a typical representati... More: the store of valueOne of the functions of money or more generally of any asset that can be saved and exchanged at a later time without loss of its purchasing power. See also Precautionary Holdings. More function. However, when money is stored in digital form, for instance on a bank account, it is called savings and is perfectly legitimate. When it is stored in cash, it takes on a negative connotation of concealment.
Cash is far more than a payment instrumentDevice, tool, procedure or system used to make a transaction or settle a debt. More
Another term may apply less biased but is misleading when it applies to cash: use. Indeed, headlines will regularly claim that cash use is declining. On 11 September 2018, the BBC published an article titled “Cash use falls further as plastic payments rise” The article explains that the share of cash as a paymentA transfer of funds which discharges an obligation on the part of a payer vis-à-vis a payee. More instrument has been declining slowly (by 1%) in the UK. But the use of cash is not limited to payments. It is also used as a store of value, as a budgeting instrument, as a back-up in case of an emergency, or a collector’s item. And all these uses are perfectly legitimate.
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