Cashless society
society in which financial transactions are not conducted with physical banknotes or coins but instead with digital information
In a cashless society, financial transactions are not conducted with physical banknotes or coins, but instead with digital information (usually an electronic representation of money). Cashless societies have existed from the time when human society came into existence, based on barter and other methods of exchange, and cashless transactions have also become possible in modern times using credit cards, debit cards, mobile payments, and digital currencies such as bitcoin.
Such a concept has been discussed widely, particularly because the world is experiencing a rapid and increasing use of digital methods of recording, managing, and exchanging money in commerce, investment and daily life in many parts of the world, and transactions which would historically have been undertaken with cash are often now undertaken electronically. Some countries now set limits on transactions and transaction values for which non-electronic payment may be legally used.
History
Early ideas of a cashless economy were expressed by Edward Bellamy in his novel Looking Backward. The trend towards the use of non-cash transactions and settlement in daily life began during the 1990s when electronic banking became common. By the 2010s, digital payment methods were widespread in many countries, with examples including intermediaries such as PayPal, digital wallet systems such as Apple Pay, contactless and NFC payments by electronic card or smartphone, and electronic bills and banking, all in widespread use. At this point cash had become actively disfavored in some kinds of transaction which would historically have been very ordinary to pay with physical tender, and larger cash amounts were in some situations treated with suspicion, due to its versatility and ease of use in money laundering and financing of terrorism. Additionally, payment with a large amount of cash has been actively prohibited by some suppliers and retailers, to the point of coining the expression of a "war on cash".
The 2016 United States User Consumer Survey Study claims that 75% of respondents preferred a credit or debit card as their payment method while only 11% of respondents preferred cash.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cashless society” is society in which financial transactions are not conducted with physical banknotes or coins but instead with digital information. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cashless, society and financial, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “society in which financial transactions are not conducted with physical banknotes or coins but instead with digital information” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25548518. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cashless society” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.