The Future of Banking: When Will We No Longer Need Cash?

Andrew Lisa   Tue, January 24, 2023

In 1950, Americans could pay for dinner at a restaurant even if they left their money at home for the first time in history. That was the year Diners Club introduced the world’s first credit card.

More than 70 years later, the cashless society that’s been promised since then still hasn’t materialized. Despite direct deposit, BNPL, Apple Pay, Venmo, cryptocurrency and the rest, green paper rectangles with pictures of dead presidents still have a home in our wallets.’

If mobile banking apps and blockchains didn’t bring death to the dollar, is the long-awaited cashless society a myth, or is the generation coming of age today the last that will ever see paper money outside of a museum?

The Writing Is on the Wall for the Good Old Greenback

According to The New York Times, central banks across the world are experimenting with digital versions of their money — kind of like Bitcoin, but issued by the state and controlled as a currency. Sweden, China, Japan and others are introducing these digital currencies alongside old-fashioned cash. The plan in large would be to phase out paper money gradually over time.

According to the Atlantic Council, the U.S. Federal Reserve recently began working on a bank-to-bank digital currency of its own designed to speed up transfers between the world’s financial institutions. Unlike the previously mentioned countries, America’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) is only for wholesale transactions and isn’t yet a consumer currency — “yet” being the key word.

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/future-banking-no-longer-cash-120025072.html