The Real Price of Convenience: Going Cashless Is Costing You More Than You Think
Spending money is now more seamless than ever. But with digital payments becoming the norm, what exactly are we trading for convenience?
Is Tapping Too Easy? The Psychology Driving Digital Spending
We’ve all done it at some point – tapped our card, phone, or watch at the checkout without thinking twice. But in the background, there’s an additional cost of its convenience that few people ever consider.
Paying with cash reportedly causes psychological discomfort, as we’re constantly aware of what we’re spending, known as the “pain of paying” by some researchers. Their studies show that when we pay digitally, we pay much more freely and feel less friction. In real terms, research has shown that mobile payments lead to 9% higher transaction values and 11% higher payment frequency when compared to cash. And more than half of Americans now say their primary payment method is digital rather than traditional. [Source: TIME]
Essentially, using modern ways of paying bypasses our hardwired financial senses, meaning we’re all silently becoming more comfortable with invisible spending.
Cashless: Convenient or Controlling?
With technological progress taking us effortlessly towards a cashless society, we are already seeing a subtle but serious loss of control. We must remember that every scan, swipe, and tap is tracked, logged, and now even monetised.
Your spending data is used to create a financial profile, and to target you. Governments have access to your transactions – whether directly or upon request – and all of this connects you to traceable spending habits. Along with AI analytics, everything you buy now creates a living profile that reveals more about you than you might expect, including what you value, where you go, and when you might be most vulnerable to advertisements.
“Unlike cash transactions, digital payments leave a footprint that governments, corporations, and financial institutions can track. This level of surveillance leads to concerns about how transaction data is exploited” [Source: Wavetec]
Social Credit Systems: China’s Cautionary Tale
China, being ahead of the West in terms of cashless implementations, offers warning signs of where this path could lead us. Under their Social Credit System, individuals are scored on every transaction they make – and everything they do. Combining financial and social statistics with additional state control means spending too much or too little on certain things can affect a person’s standing. Starting as simply as missing bill payments or buying too many video games could reportedly lead to job application restrictions or limited access to flights and trains.
And it started with a trackable, cashless society.
In the West, we may not see these systems in action yet, but the infrastructure that enables such an environment is falling into place. Think about the reduction of ATM availability, real-time payment analytics, digital IDs, and the ever-increasing capabilities of public surveillance. The tools are already here.
Designed Exclusion
Not everybody finds a cashless world convenient. A UK finance report in 2023 found that elderly, disabled, and low-income individuals were the most reliant on cash payments, accounting for 12% of all transactions. [Source: Financial Times]
With the declining ATM and high-street banking networks, and an increase in businesses exclusively accepting digital payments, are we at risk of limiting who can still use their money? If everybody needs access to apps and higher tech literacy – we will see an exclusion of some of our most vulnerable citizens. Not everybody has equal access to a digital world, potentially leading to an offline underclass in our society.
It’s Actually Quite Fragile…
Cash works without electricity, signal, or permission. By contrast, digital payments rely on tech infrastructure – infrastructure that can easily break. Power outages, cyber attacks, or system failures can block people from their money completely.
Cybersecurity experts warn that cashless infrastructure—servers, networks, and power grids—creates single points of failure. As Swiss Re notes, a software bug or outage ‘can paralyse a whole economy’ [Source: Swiss Re]. This risk isn’t theoretical: in July 2024 a global outage tied to a CrowdStrike update forced retailers in the UK and Australia to switch to cash-only, blocking sales and prompting emergency cash withdrawals.
Whose Idea Was It Anyway?
None of us voted for a cashless society. It gradually embedded itself as a certainty of the future, framed as innovation, and focused on efficiency. But, despite being sold as freedom, it may in fact be on its way to restricting us.
- You give up privacy without any choice
- You increasingly risk exclusion if you don’t comply
- You spend more, and more often, without even noticing
It doesn’t feel like these are byproducts of a cashless world – it feels more like it’s working exactly as planned.
Final Thought
Cashless doesn’t mean costless. Behind the ever-present tap-to-pay systems lies a greater price – your privacy and your autonomy. After all, convenience is a currency. How much are we willing to pay for it?
