Can a whole country become a cashless society?

The government of Denmark has proposed that the nation should dispense of all cash payments and effectively become a cashless society.

The Danish Chamber of Commerce has recently spoken out about the future of Denmark’s retail sector and the form of payment that customers will be using to pay for goods and services.

‘‘Society has changed so much that there is no longer a need for requirements on cash payments. Plus, cash has become tremendously expensive to handle due to security reasons,’’ said chamber spokesman Henrik Hytolft.

The statistics show that Denmark is inching closer to becoming dependent on payment technology. The population of Denmark currently stands at 5.6m and over 1.8m citizens use payment application MobilePay, which allows its users to instantly transfer money to people around the world.

Although a large amount of people in Denmark use mobile technology to deal with their payments, the majority of Denmark still uses cash. Experts reckon that it could take up to twenty years before cash is rendered useless in the European country.

‘‘A completely cashless society would be very difficult to achieve – you would almost need a complete cash ban. It would also have to meet several requirements, such as good emergency backups,’’ said Niklas Arvidsson at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in a recent interview.

‘‘One reason for continuing with cash is the number of consumers who still want to continue to use it, such as older people. PRO, the Swedish national organisation of pensioners, has been quite active on this issue,’’ continued Arvidsson.

 

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