Because of all the excitement over the Budget, one could be forgiven for missing the biggest story today, in the Washington Post:
“I can’t see why we should be printing bank notes at all anymore,” says Björn Ulvaeus, former member of 1970’s pop group ABBA, and a vocal proponent for a world without cash…
A cashless society may seem like an odd cause for someone who made a fortune on “Money, Money, Money” and other ABBA hits, but for Ulvaeus it’s a matter of security.
After his son was robbed for the third time he started advocating a faster transition to a fully digital economy, if only to make life harder for thieves.
“If there were no cash, what would they do?” says Ulvaeus, 66.
The Financial Times (£) has a more serious take on the same issue, which contains this interesting point:
Apart from anything else, there is a cost to handling cash, in terms of storing, guarding and shifting it. A 2010 report by Visa cited a European Commission estimate that the cost to society of all payment methods is the equivalent of about 2-3 per cent of Europe’s GDP, of which cash accounts for two-thirds. A 2008 study by the McKinsey consultancy estimated that in Europe €60bn-€100bn annually is spent on processing cash payments, a figure that includes the production of notes and coins, transport and security. A similar study by the Dutch central bank puts the price tag at €300 per family. A number of Dutch supermarkets are talking about moving exclusively to cashless payments by 2014, in part to get away from cash handling costs. The motivation is the same for governments.
Given we were talking about the downside of transaction taxes this morning, it’s worth bearing in mind that transaction costs have the same problem. If someone doesn’t buy something because they don’t have the cash on them, that is a net loss in welfare – both the potential buyer and potential seller are worse off than if the transaction had gone ahead. As anyone who has ever actually been in that situation knows.
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