COVID19 Kills Cash Too

A growing number of businesses and individuals worldwide have stopped using banknotes in fear that physical currency, handled by tens of thousands of people over its lifetime, could be a vector for  Public officials and health experts have said the risk of transferring the virus person-to-person through but they don't rule it out. While it is of course eminently sensible to avoid every possible source of Covid 19 contamination, the consequences of a cashless society inevitably hit hard the credit-poor, those who can least afford it. 'And the cashless society', says Brett Scott, is a euphemism for the "ask-your-banks-for-permission-to-pay society". Rather than an exchange occurring directly between the hotel and me, it takes the form of a "have your people talk to my people" affair. Various intermediaries message one another to arrange an exchange between our respective banks. That may be a convenient option, but in a cashless society it would no longer be an option at all. You'd have no choice but to conform to the intermediaries' automated bureaucracy, giving them a lot of power, and a lot of data about the micro-texture of your economic life.