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Why I gave up on cash Contactless is now irresistible

Coins were magical, almost numinous things. Hanna-Barbara/Riha Archives-Getty Images

Coins were magical, almost numinous things. Hanna-Barbara/Riha Archives-Getty Images


November 14, 2024   5 mins

Three or four years ago, I wrote a piece contemplating the end of cash. I wrote it as a mourner, lamenting how I would miss its heft, its solidity, its sheer physicality, in contrast to pinging and flicking invisible funds through the atmosphere. The other day, though, I realised my attitude had changed fundamentally. I am no longer a doughty champion of cash, but a digger of its grave.

When the end of coins and notes was first spoken of, I defiantly bought two purses for coins. One was a smart zip-up number, purchased at Gatwick Airport; the other, from the Glastonbury Oxfam, a secondhand blue cloth one with a brass snap-fastener and a mystical sequinned serpent. One for my hiking rucksack, one for town. No longer would I scrabble round for coins among all the other bits and bobs I carry with me. I would be quick, efficient, organised. And hang on to cash, on principle.

The system worked well for a time. But the purses grew steadily heavier. Eventually both got so weighty that they had to be exiled from their bags. This, I think, marked the beginning of my slide from grace. I went on paying with notes, because I liked the speed and snap of them; but I didn’t properly consider that I would get coins back. Now purseless, I put them loose in the bag, or in pockets, and began to resent them, or certainly all those smaller than 50p. Cash in the pocket has a useful just-in-case feel, but coins — even with the pleasing fatness of the one-pound sort — can’t impart even that.

The day my eyes were definitively opened, however, was at the beginning of October, when I went out for a pint of milk. I took my serpent-purse, adhering to the self-imposed rule that purchases smaller than ten pounds had to be made with cash. My satisfying ulterior motive was to rid that purse of roughly half its weight. The nice Kurdish grocer, who called me “darling” and whose shop was called “Hope Grocery”, surely wouldn’t mind. The only event that seemed to trouble him was the pungent old man who came in most evenings, blocking the aisles with cheery chat, whom he would trail after anxiously with the air-freshener spray. So I went out boldly into the dark.

It was not the usual chap but one of his friends, fatter, bearded and locked to his phone. When I took the milk to the counter, he did not look up for a while. When at last he did, it was to see me still arranging pence and two-pence pieces into neat small piles. I seemed to be slower at this than in the past. Two customers were fidgeting behind me. And at that point a heretic-thought struck me like a knife: why on earth was I going through this laborious performance? Why was I indulging myself by being primitive? Because primitive was how I felt: as if I’d insisted on making fire by rubbing two sticks together, rather than striking a match for an instant flash and a flare.

Cash also seemed slightly distasteful. Covid, of course, made us newly aware of this. In some countries (I think especially of Egypt and India, both places I otherwise adore), even the notes from an ATM are so used that they are limp and dirty, and after each handling I would compulsively sanitise my hands. But even here in the oh-so-clean and disinfected West, my sons object to sixpences and old threepenny bits being lodged in the Christmas pudding. They can do without that sort of luck.

This change of heart had been happening so subtly that I’d hardly noticed it. The ease, swiftness and curious satisfaction of tapping a card on a reader has overtaken that ancient source of happiness, having the right change; indeed it’s an action so swift and so satisfying that you can almost dance as you do it. A card weighs nothing, slips into a pocket, obviates the need for a bag at all (for I heartily dislike bags, a woman’s burden), and is therefore liberating. The perfectly sound alarms about Big Brother, criminal networks and stolen identity pale beside the sheer exuberant ease of the thing. If Big Brother wants to know that I used my card today to buy a pain chocolat, a packet of redbush tea and a pot of weatherproof paint, he is welcome.

At the same time, my fondness for cash has been diminishing. As a child in pre-decimal times, I adored coins: not only because I didn’t have many, but because they were also magical, almost numinous things. The pretty flowered sixpence that appeared under my pillow when I lost a tooth; the heavy, majestic half-crown that nestled in the very toe of a Christmas stocking; the many-sided threepenny bit, like a little castle, complete wight portcullis; and the cheeky, worthless farthing, with its wren. A new coin was a treasure, as fine and glittering as a jewel. Decimalisation, for no good reason, made the coins duller and lighter. They were characters no longer, only a means of exchange.

“A new coin was a treasure, as fine and glittering as a jewel.”

And what of cash now? Perhaps it will join the ranks of all those curious items that were once ubiquitous, the bodkins and tinder-boxes and stems of clay pipes, the game-counters and hatpins that wash up continually out of the Thames mud; or the old cardboard bus tickets and elaborate receipts from long-closed-down department stores, which shake out of secondhand books. They will rattle around in drawers, and grow dull in their uselessness. Instead of feeling a fond cousinage with the obols, sesterces and thalers of distant empires, we will simply marvel that things were ever done this way. What now still clatters at the margins of our lives will be compressed between the PVC pages of an album: interesting, but dead.

But of course what we will have lost will not merely be coins and notes. It will be, first, the quotidian instinct to budget: to stay within the span of whatever is in your pocket or wallet, and not exceed it. Credit cards began to sound the knell for that, but I still enjoyed until quite recently taking only a fiver on walks, tucked into a top pocket of my dreadful old walking jacket. Now, somehow, my bank card has slipped in too, quite spoiling my sense of virtuous limitation.

Second, we shall lose the mental exercise of getting the right coins together and calculating, most happily before any machine, the change due. For many of us who wept over maths at school, this was the only sort of arithmetic we regularly practised. It kept the brain alert as well as any crossword or Sudoku. Now each transaction involves no mental agility; our funds flow out unheeded and unregarded. Increasingly, I don’t bother to notice the price of lunch or a trawl through Boots; if I need it, I buy it. It’s good not to be obsessed by the hoarding or lavishing of money, but such utter disconnection is unhealthy.

Last of all, the loss of cash will contribute to the unanchored character of much of modern life. Now that we can communicate and work from anywhere, many of us are no longer tied to any particular place. “Where is she?” is a common question round the office, often meaning what time zone rather than which city. Community hubs, whether pub, shop or church, have emptied, and even school may be virtual. Too many interactions are with chatbots which have no faces, bodies or human understanding. The material networks that weave us together are now largely unfeeling. Cash, though, demands a physical connection, however brief. A mouth speaking. A hand touching a hand.


Ann Wroe is the obituaries editor of The Economist, and was previously its US editor. She has also written nine works of non-fiction, including biographies of Pontius Pilate, Orpheus and Shelley. Her latest book is Lifescapes: A Biographer’s search for the soul. She lives in Brighton and London.


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Graham Stull
Graham Stull
26 days ago

This light-weight article does an almost admirable job of missing all of the important points around the debate on cash. To know that it was written by an established editor of the greatly diminished legacy publication The Economist provides me with a tinge of satisfaction at having long ago cancelled my subscription.
The fundamental issue is around the slow boil of financially sovereign economic frogs in a pot of centralised, authoritarian forces. Cash is much more than a functional means of payment and storing value. It is by its very nature completely anonymous, decentralised and independent of power supplies. It is difficult to trace and easy to hide.
Which is why, for decades, the forces of the State have been encouraging a gradual shift away from cash and towards payment methods that can be tracked in a more centralised, controlled way – always under the guise of convenience. We have already witnessed the effect of this: If a portion of the population protests against senseless and authoritarian vaxxine mandates, it is possible to freeze their bank accounts. One cannot freeze their cash, however.
If a tax authority wishes to control your every transaction and impose ever higher and more punitive levels of transactional taxes, they can do so at the click of a mouse button, provided these transactions are digital.
Digital payments are simply the nail in the coffin of centralising away the financial sovereignty of citizens. If we allow this to happen, we very much deserve to be boiled alive.
I, for one, will continue to pay with cash, no matter how much change jingles in my pockets.

Brett H
Brett H
26 days ago
Reply to  Graham Stull

Thank you. It seems fairly obvious to me.

Sean Lothmore
Sean Lothmore
26 days ago
Reply to  Graham Stull

‘The state’ has also been pretty down on cryptocurrencies as well. Perhaps the first real-world use case of Bitcoin was when the government of Cyprus took 10% of everyone’s bank account savings as a once-off levy.

Brett H
Brett H
26 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

I never knew that. It’s pretty shocking and frightening.

RM Parker
RM Parker
26 days ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

I recall the Cypriot government doing that. “A haircut”, it was euphemistically termed. Scary and grim.

Stuart Sutherland
Stuart Sutherland
26 days ago
Reply to  Graham Stull

Well said Graham! Cash is anonymous unlike a wee rectangular bit of plastic. It’s just nice to have the choice of paying by cash or card.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
26 days ago
Reply to  Graham Stull

You use cash for EVERY transaction, do you?! The cash which is after all issued by the very state whose main priority, in your view, is to control every action of its citizens! Cashless payments have largely been driven by private corporations, and not the state, but in any case, they are vastly more convenient and provide a better service, just like Amazon does over poorly stocked local shops where you can’t buy what you want, or Uber over restrictive black cabs.

There is no such world as the libertarian fantasy you appear to invoke. The only choice is rule by a state, hopefully a well functioning one (for example Singapore) or by warlords and gangsters. Taxes of one sort or another are inevitable. They should be justly and sensibly levied, but once having done so, I see no reason why the citizens who cannot escape them should be subsidising the ones who can.

Graham Stull
Graham Stull
26 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

I do not use cash for every transaction. Nor did I make that claim. Rather, I favour the use of cash over electronic payments. For example, today I went to the shop and purchased myself some biscuits. I paid in cash. However, yesterday I bought some goods online. I used my credit card. Overall, it’s a healthy mix of payment methods.
As for your ‘the only choice is rule by a state’, you are sadly mistaken in your analysis. While some form of State is usually desirable, a well-functioning society includes checks on the reach of that force. Democracy, in theory at least, is one such check.
But a more important check is the financial sovereignty of the citizenry. We should aim for a situation in which taxpaying, while not exactly voluntary, is not impossible to avoid, with effort. This forces tax authorities to keep taxes lower (i.e. making it easier to pay than avoid) and it limits the financial resources the State can muster, thereby muting its natural tendency towards tyranny. It also incentivises wise and judicious use of public resources. The State should seek to govern with the consent of the people, including in relation to the public purse. After all, most people, if they believe their taxes are being well spent (on addressing market failures and providing public goods) will be happy to pay their fair share.
Cash is wonderful in this regard. We all know that the black market economy runs on cash, and if the tax man gets too greedy, more and more of the transactions slip into that black tax hole. And that is as it should be.

Adrian Pearson
Adrian Pearson
25 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Canadian Truckers

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
27 days ago

Forgetting about the writing which looks as if the author is about 10 years old. I don’t use cash because it is not convenient but I would not get rid of it at the moment. The reasons:
1) I don’t trust the banks, who would know everything about me.
2) If Labour gets a second term, there will be another referendum on rejoining Europe. One of the key points will be that we must have the Euro. It is a lot easier to slide into the Euro with plastic money. We will be manipulated in this way with most people (young people) not even noticing the change. I just don’t like King Charles but I seethe when I see Queen Ursula.
3) All of this, as above, is intended to remove our Britishness. It is intended to take key decisions for government, which can’t be even discussed. A shrug of the shoulders : “We must do this because these are the rules.”

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
26 days ago

I’m not sure there’s much a bank can gauge when looking at your transactions other than where you buy things from. Statements don’t go into the detail of what it is you’re paying for.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
26 days ago

I got the impression that she was trying to NOT write just another polemic. (We’ve heard all the arguments before.)
And, even though I choose to maintain my resistance longer than she has, I enjoyed what struck me as a well written little essay.

Simric Yarrow
Simric Yarrow
26 days ago

In my trip around Mexico at the beginning of the year I was surprised at the resolute way that nation is resisting electronic currency. Even in the most touristy places it was often very difficult to use a card and far easier to work with notes and coins. My judgement was basically that Mexicans are a/often extraordinarily thoughtful and well educated and quite different to their stereotyped images from north of the borderand b/ generally very sceptical of globalized economic ideas because they’re able to look at the US’s sclerotic part in that with a little wry humour from a close distance.
They’re holding onto cash… Which made me wonder why we think losing it is “inevitable”. It’s worked pretty well for a few millennia after all.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
26 days ago
Reply to  Simric Yarrow

In those touristy places, cash is also a mechanism for tax avoidance. It is easier to manage records built on bills and coins than those constructed of trackable digital transactions.

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago

Je**s fu*****g Ch***t!
What’s the hell is the point of this? What is the writer trying to say? Is there actually a functioning brain behind this … what? Who is she talking to?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
27 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Clearly not you if you’re too simple to understand the article

Brett H
Brett H
27 days ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You think there’s something deeper there that I missed?

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
27 days ago

I haven’t used cash regularly for 7 or 8 years now. For a while I would carry a £10 note in my phone, but the kids kept taking it off me and eventually I just stopped bothering. They are now old enough to have mobile banking, so they fleece me electronically instead.
In all that time there has only been one occasion when I needed cash. A carpark in Cornwall which nominally allowed mobile payment but there was no signal (great work, Cornwall County Council). We managed to scrape enough odd bits of coin together from my wife’s handbag and she now keeps a bag of change in the car in case it happens again, but it never has.

It will be, first, the quotidian instinct to budget: to stay within the span of whatever is in your pocket or wallet, and not exceed it.

Personally I find it easier to budget for the whole family with all the information available through online banking, direct debits etc. In fact I take a small pleasure in balancing the numbers. Cash always felt like something I should spend because I had it in my pocket.

AC Harper
AC Harper
27 days ago

And yet there are still some small businesses that only take cash or prefer it. There is a cost to going cashless as the card companies charge for handling the transaction and businesses must include these charges in their prices.

2 plus 2 equals 4
2 plus 2 equals 4
26 days ago
Reply to  AC Harper

There’s a cost to handling cash also. Banks increasingly charge business account holders for banking cash. Plus there is the cost in time, petrol, parking etc to physically deposit cash. That’s if you can even find a branch.
Of course if, like my wife’s hairdresser, you only accept cash because you’re not declaring it, then that’s something else entirely.

Peter Fisher
Peter Fisher
26 days ago

Could be outweighed by the tax advantages of taking cash.

Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson
26 days ago

You can’t put a debit card in the slot to free the supermarket trolley dear…

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
26 days ago

I can’t be bothered to read that through again but it seems to me this poor woman has entirely missed the threat to individual liberty that the abolition of cash will bring about. But she seems like a nice old lady.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
26 days ago

and when the programmable currency of govt fantasies becomes the norm, this writer will be back to whine about the glory days of cash. Yes, digital is convenient but when you are measuring ‘convenience’ is the 30 seconds saved by swiping a card instead of counting out bills, you have missed the point.

Chipoko
Chipoko
26 days ago

Graham Stull
 5 hours ago
This light-weight article does an almost admirable job of missing all of the important points around the debate on cash. To know that it was written by an established editor of the greatly diminished legacy publication The Economist provides me with a tinge of satisfaction at having long ago cancelled my subscription.
Excellent prose!

Graham Stull
Graham Stull
26 days ago
Reply to  Chipoko

Why thank you.

Kelly Madden
Kelly Madden
26 days ago

Inevitable, perhaps.
But: A digital trail of your every move in the marketplace.

Cal RW
Cal RW
26 days ago

You cash people are in trouble if you need to use a public loo in some parts of Europe. I was there two weeks ago and ran into several that required a one Euro fee but would only accept credit cards

Brett H
Brett H
26 days ago
Reply to  Cal RW

And you’re in trouble when the internet service is down.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
25 days ago
Reply to  Cal RW

It’s not “either or”. Both must be available options.

rchrd 3007
rchrd 3007
26 days ago

Problem is. Even if I was using cash, which I do, it only becomes physically cash when I withdraw it from a hole in the wall. Before that it is the same electronic series of ones and zeros that make up all my credit card payments

William Cameron
William Cameron
26 days ago

And so you now pay two people instead of one. You pay the shop and you pay the bank. The shop gets a bit less and you pay a bit more and bankers drives the biggest car. Bigger than yours and bigger than the shopkeepers.

William Cameron
William Cameron
26 days ago

It actually quite difficult to buy a car with cash.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
26 days ago

Banknotes and coins are the only way that you can have physical control of your money.
What money is, how it is created, and the role of banks is very complicated. The money deposited in a bank legally belongs to the bank. The bank takes ownership of the money deposited and records that they owe the customer the amount concerned. The amount is a liability the bank owes the customer.
Recommended is the book, Where Does Money Come From, by Ryan Collins and others (T J International).
With decimalisation in the UK, the history on the pre-decimal coins was erased with their replacement by the new decimal coinage. Handling a coin minted in 1914 in the reign of George V connected a person with their history.
In the 1960s a relative of mine received in change a shilling from the reign of William IV. Worn almost smooth in 130 years of almost continual usage, only the date and a silhouette of the King’s portrait were visible. I still have the coin.
And with decimalisation, the penny effectively became a cent. That it’s still called a penny is a bit of kidology. Now with the issue of the coins for Charles III, Britannia has finally been ‘retired’ from the 50 pence cent coin; something once suggested by Gordon Brown.

K Tsmitz
K Tsmitz
26 days ago

Rock hard pass on digital.
Take a good dose of very fragile utilities infrastructure, add to that a frightening lack of young people getting into the ‘dirty’ trades required to maintain or upgrade said fragile utilities infrastructure, and mix that with the insatiable appetite our leaders have to electrify everything in the name of net-zero, and you have all the ingredients for a future of energy uncertainty.
And given that without said energy any digital dollars (or cryptos) or digital transactions are worthless to me, I’ll be sure to always hold cash, gold, jewelry, tools and art.
Digital anything is really just vaporware.

Dee Harris
Dee Harris
26 days ago

I yesterday accidentally missed out on a 30% off £2.49p raspberries at my local Aldi, paid for by card. My other half took the receipt back today and got the money off… 75p in coins. Too little for digital repayment apparently. They will almost certainly remain on the shelf for a very long time…

Brett H
Brett H
26 days ago
Reply to  Dee Harris

Your other half went back for the 75p. Is life that tough in England?

Su Mac
Su Mac
25 days ago

It’s like she never heard about Farage and 100’s of others being debanked for politically unacceptable views re Russia!

It is not the day to day that concerns, it is the day you – or someone else – falls out with the doctrinaires and they feeeze you while they think… If no one still takes cash or you don’t have cash you are trapped.

Plus, I have travelled in post hurricane Puerto Rico. NO CARDS!

Keep using it to preserve that option for all of society if not yourself.

Plus, use it for parking ( I keep a small pot in the car), charity boxes. I don’t accumulate that much and I use it constantly alongside cards.

michael harris
michael harris
20 days ago

Why I gave up on people. Contactless is now irresistible.