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Business Daily

Who Needs Cash?

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2018

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The cashless economy: Who are the winners and losers in the worldwide shift to digital payments?

Rob Young hears from a grumpy pensioner in Sweden, a country that has blazed the way in ditching physical currency, as well as a Swedish expert on payment systems, Professor Niklas Arvidsson.

Plus what difference has Narendra Modi's "demonetisation" policy of banning large denomination notes made to India's economy? Monika Halan, consulting editor at Indian financial newspaper Mint, gives her considered opinion. Meanwhile Rahul Tandon explains why Indians still don't know what Bitcoin is, even though they know they like it.

(Picture: Indian farmer with daughter using mobile phone and credit card for online payment; Credit: triloks/Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, I'm Rob Young. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

0:07.9

Coming up, the promise of a future without physical cash.

0:11.6

All that demonetisation did was to bump up the rate of growth of change from cash to the whole digitization piece by about 30%.

0:21.2

What would have taken five years?

0:23.2

Happened in a year.

0:24.5

There'll be winners and losers.

0:26.4

A cashless world without notes and coins worries many.

0:30.0

He didn't want to have my money, so I have to pay with part.

0:36.3

I think if cash disappears all over, it will be a very big problem.

0:43.4

That's all in Business Daily from the BBC. There's a saying that cash is king, but there's revolution

0:52.1

in the air. King cash is at risk from losing his throne. We're increasingly turning away from notes and coins, paying for things in other ways, using bank and credit cards, online payment services and even digital currencies. A few countries are not only embracing the growing trend towards cashless transactions,

1:11.9

they're pushing people and businesses in that direction.

1:15.5

India and Sweden are two nations that have put,

1:18.4

sometimes controversial, policies in place to persuade citizens to abandon cash.

1:23.4

In Sweden, it's working.

1:25.3

Cash is now used in less than one in five of all transactions in stores.

1:30.3

That's half the number five years ago.

1:32.6

But not everybody is happy about the shift.

1:35.9

My name is Myles Johnson, and I'm 73 years old.

1:42.4

I'm living here in the centre of Stockholm. I think I am a very active person and

1:50.0

doing a lot of things with friends. We bought the tickets for this travel. My friend paid it.

1:59.0

So now it's my turn to pay her.

...

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