How long will it take for cash to become completely obsolete?

Question

Debit/credit cards
Online bill pay
Recurring direct debits from your account
...checks...


Who needs cash anymore?

Personally, if a place doesn't accept an alternative form of payment (cards), I don't shop/eat there. I feel dirty and vunerable toting around cash in my pocket.

How about you?

Answer 1

The problem is you can't relay give Junior a credit card for his lunch milk but you can give him 50 cents and if you wanna loan your friend five bucks you would need a ATM machine but then again if his had his card he wouldn't need the loan

Answer 2

Cash will never be obsolete. People will always carry some amount of cash because it has a particular value. Cash will always be accepted wherever you go. I do like the credit cards and the ability of people to use debit cards instead of writing checks because it is much faster. I still carry cash because it gives me a sense of how much I can really spend and not go over. I cannot spend more cash than I have. Therefore, I will never be in major debt.

Answer 3

Cash will always be around. It is convenient and anonymous. You don't need electricity to transact with cash, so this is the only form of payment feasible in, say, a farmers' market. Accepting cash does not cost the merchant anything, while a swipe of a card can be as expensive as $0.45. And I haven't even started talking about the informal economy...

Also, read the Survey of Consumer Finances:

In 2004, 91.3 percent of families had some type of transaction account—a category comprising checking, savings, and money market deposit accounts, money market mutual funds, and call accounts at brokerages. The ownership rate, essentially unchanged from 2001, was 90.6 in the 1998 survey and notably lower before then. Families that did not have any type of transaction account in 2004 were disproportionately likely to have low incomes, to be headed by a person younger than 35, to be nonwhite or Hispanic, to be headed by a person who was neither working nor retired, to be renters, or to have relatively low levels of wealth.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/Pubs/oss/oss2/2004/bull0206.pdf

Translation: for about 9% of U.S. population, cash is the only way to transact...

Answer 4

Presently I am almost exclusively plastic. I have not written a check for ages and seldom carry more than 50 dollars in cash. I never carry a balance so their is no cost for this service.

Answer 5

I carry plastic,BUT when I did carry cash and paid for somthing,the cashier lOOked at me like I was dirt.I still carry cash I like money paper,coins? alot of ppl think like u.How can u feel dirty.I bet u think u are better than everybody. I know u r not a christian??

Answer 6

Until every individual can take payment by card

Answer 7

A cashless society is one of the signs of the coming of the end of the earth. So...............I'm not really all that anxious to see it come about.

Answer 8

Cash will be obsolete once capitalism becomes too.