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Smart Card & Identity News
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Researcher– Patsy Editorial Everett
Researcher – Patsy Everett
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Smart Card & Identity News • March 2012
Patsy Everett
Our Comments
Dear Subscribers,
Once more the annual Digital Money Forum
clicked into life in London’s east end on the
28/29th March. Mine host David Birch was his
normal self, shaking the tree of established
thinking to see if any interesting apples fall out.
Of course they always do, it’s whether you
notice it at the time!
Anette Brolos from the Copenhagen Financial IT Region (CFIR) got
the day rolling by discussing their project in Denmark that is looking
at the future of money and their vision of a cashless society.
Denmark of course was very early into the game with the Dankort
(debit card) and Dancoin. Anette reminded us that cash costs about
€26 Bn to manage in Europe and the impact that this has on
business. As has been pointed out in our lead article this month the
cost of cash is often hidden away because it’s not obvious who is
paying the bill. But we know this, don’t we? But also there is the
environmental burden, the impact of crime and isn’t money just plain
filthy? We are always hearing about how much cocaine you can find
on a standard used currency bill.
However not to be put off Anette seems clear that one day there will
be a cashless society (more or less) brought about by a number of
scenarios of which social development will be a substantial element
in our future. It goes without saying that technology will also have its
say with mobile wallets, NFC, bar codes and the like. But Anette
ended with a closing thought by telling us that according to a Danish
national bank study, cash is four times more expensive to use than
the Danish debit card (Dankort).
Now here’s the thing, if this is true and we hear similar figures for the
UK as well as the rest of Europe, who is promoting the continued
use of cash?
Of course everybody will tell you it is the criminals, organised crime
and the like that need the anonymity and fluidity of cash to harvest
their crimes. We might mention the grey economy (it just sounds
better than black) which everybody seems to do that gets you a lower
bill if you pay in cash or if you really don’t want people to know what
you are doing and you really don’t want to be traced.
I want to suggest that this is actually only a part of the story,
behavioural economics comes into this in a bigger way than you
might imagine. The truth is that people don’t like change. There is an
old tale that tells you that promoting radical new ideas are at best
ignored but in general are heavily criticised and resisted by those with
established positions. Only a small number of people follow a vision
and they are usually the ones closest to the evangelist. Sometimes this
can of course create a church of followers and this was perhaps the
greatest talent of Steve Jobs. If I’m right on this with the unfortunate
demise of Steve, then Apple has reached its pinnacle and only has
one way to go. You can do experiments in the laboratory to show
that all of this is normal human behaviour.
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