End Times and Current Events

The Cashless Society is Almost Here – And With Some Very Sinister Implications

Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

Among the long list of items bundled by consensus reality merchants under the banner of ‘conspiracy theory’, is a world without cash – where technocrats rule over the populace, and everything and anything is exchanged via plastic and RFID chips.

In this sterile and controlled Orwellian hi-tech society, the idea of cash being passed from hand to hand would be as archaic as the thought of carrying around a rucksack of tally sticks today.

Still, despite the incredible penetration of credit and debit card transactions into economic aggregate, and the boom in internet shopping, few will comfortably admit that a cashless society is nearly upon us. In part, it’s a natural denial by many fueled by the idea of our society is indeed on a collision course with the sort of dystopic impersonal future like that depicted in the 1970′s sci-fi film classic, ‘Logan’s Run’.

Over the years, futurists and commentators alike seemed to agree that a cashless society would be a slow creep, and cash would automatically phase itself in simply by virtue of the sheer volume of electronic transactions that would gradually make paper less available and more costly to redeem and exchange. This is still true for the most part. What few counted on, however, was how the final push would take place, and why. Some will be surprised by these new emerging mechanisms, and the political and sinister implications they will ultimately lead to.

What’s the time frame on all this? Difficult to say, but what is certain is that the initial phases are already in motion…

Introduction of Parallel Currencies

There has been a lot made about the ‘cashless society’ in media, but this cannot fully happen until there is a cashless currency.

Every revolution needs a good crisis in order to germinate its seed. The cashless revolution is no different. It should be abundantly clear by now that the global financial meltdown has been engineered at every juncture of its unfolding by the very private central banks who expand and contract the money supply. A dollar or euro collapse will trigger a global economic crisis, which is a prime opportunity to introduce the next phase.

In the summer of 2012, at the height of the European Central Bank (ECB) ritualistic raping of the Greek economy, financial expert Max Keiser, alongside Mexican billionaire Hugo Salinas Price, traveled to Athens to promote the idea of a silver Drachma as a parallel currency to the ever-failing euro. In theory and in practice, this parallel currency was ‘sound money’ for individual Greeks and would allow them to retain some say in their financial destiny, and also allow them to accumulate real wealth. It should have caught on.  But this great idea did not go down well with media moguls and technocratic elites loyal to their overlords in the ECB, Wall Street and the City of London. Still, too many people remain unaware of how money is created, entered into circulation and how their private central banks control inflation, and Greece is no different.

Watch this clip from Greek television:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DZb3AZvTZe8

The US dollar is pure fiat, but it does have a theoretical backer. It is an oil-backed currency – and for better of for worse, it’s on its way to losing its long-lived status as the world’s reserve currency. There are signals that China is moving towards a gold-backed currency and has already agreed to buy the majority of its oil supply from Russia off of the US dollar peg. This could mean two things: the US could be forced to fight a war to maintain dollar supremacy, or the dollar will begin to drop as the top dog. This shift will open up a window of opportunity for money masters to insert not only a brand new global currency, but also its universal cashless attributes as well.

Common sense and free market wisdom would expect to see a sound money option replace the current fiat disaster, but as we saw in Greece, a great solution was not taken up and straddled with the dysfunctional euro, that society will continue to pay the cost of that reality.

The euro crisis was a great opportunity to throw out the euro in favour of something that could create wealth, rather than debt. As the fiat currencies continue to slide downhill, globalist are preparing their solution behind closed doors.

Enter the Cashless Currency…

It’s arguable that we approaching the cusp of that US Dollar collapse, and perhaps a Euro implosion on the back end of it. Risks of hyper inflation are very real here, but if you control the money supply might already have a ready-made solution waiting in the wings, you will not be worrying about the rift, only waiting for the chaos to ensue so as to maximise your own booty from the crisis.

Many believed that the global currency would be the SDR unit, aka Special Drawing Rights, implemented in 2001 as a supplementary foreign exchange reserve asset maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs were not considered a full-fledged currency, but rather a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged for dollars, euros, yen or other central bankers’ fiat notes.

With the SDR confined to the upper tier of the international money launderette, a new product is still needed to dovetail with designs of a  global cashless society.

Two new parallel currencies are currently being used exclusively within the electronic, or cashless  domain – Bitcoin and Ven.

Among the many worries Ben Bernanke listed in his speech at the New York Economic Club last week  was the emergence of Bitcoin. But don’t believe for a second that these digital parallel currencies are not being watched over and even steered by the money masters. Couple this latest trend with done deals by most of the world’s largest mobile networks this month to allow people to pay via a mobile ‘wallet’, and you now have the initial enabler for a new global electronic currency.

These new parallel cashless currencies could very quickly end up in pole position for supremacy when the old fiat notes fade away as a result of the next planned economic dollar and euro crisis.

Both Bitcoin and Ven appear on their surface to be independent parallel digital money systems, but the reality is much different. In April 2011, Ven announced the first commodity trade priced in Ven for gold production between Europe and South America. Both of these so-called ‘digital alternatives’ are being backed and promoted through some of the world’s biggest and most long-standing corporate dynasties, including Rothschild owned Reuters as an example, which should be of interest to any activist who believes that a digitally controlled global currency is a dangerous path to tread down.

The Electronic Deutsche Mark

Much is made of Germany’s prominent financial position within the EU, with a popular talking point being that, “Germany is carrying the majority of the load in ‘bailing out’ countries such as Greece in the south”. If the Euro is ‘heading south’ as many a financial commentator are claiming, then how would a country like Germany – or even the US Federal Reserve for that matter, hedge their bets with an impending currency collapse looming just over the horizon?

Economics professor Miles Kimball from the University of Michigan thinks he knows the answer:

“In short, for a smooth transition, a reintroduced mark needs to be an electronic mark. I recently made the case for the electronic dollar in a previous Quartz column, “E-Money: How paper currency is holding the US recovery back.” The trouble with paper money is that the rate of interest people earn on holding paper money puts a floor on the interest rate they are willing to accept in doing any other lending. For the US, I proposed making the electronic dollar the “unit of account” or economic yardstick for prices and other economic values, and having the Federal Reserve control the exchange rate between electronic dollars and paper dollars to make paper dollars gradually fall in value relative to electronic dollars during periods of time when the Fed wants room to make the interest rate negative.

In the case of Germany, there would be no need to reintroduce a paper mark along with the electronic mark, since the euro itself could continue in its current role as a “medium of exchange” for making purchases in Germany, alongside the electronic mark. A “crawling peg” exchange rate could be used to let the electronic mark gradually go up in value relative to the euro, without causing a huge rush into the mark, since with no paper mark other than the euro itself, interest rates in Germany could be close to zero when measured in euros, which would make them strongly negative in terms of marks.”

A dollar or euro crash could be the perfect storm for the introduction of a major global digital currencies, and this will do nothing but fast-track our entry into the new cashless society.

Contactless Payments

This past year’s Summer Olympic was a beta testing exercise for a number of new programs. We witnessed troops deployed en mass for the first time to marshal the international sporting event and new facial recognition technology tested to monitor its attendees. One of the chief sponsors of London 2012 Olympic was VISA, used the event as a springboard to launch its new ‘contactless payment’ technology, acclimatising the international public to making routine payments via smartphones. VISA now predicts that this new method will carry 50 per cent of its transaction volume by the year 2020.

Mastercard has also rolled out its own version called Paypass, and Barclaycard has already implemented its own mobile phone payment chip in 2011. It conceivable here, that a bank like Barclays could one day takeover a major mobile service provider in order to streamline the endless profits it could accrue from monopolising cashless payment facilities for its customers. A recent edition of Marketing Week further explains how this is program is being rolled out:

“Barclays launched Pingit this year, a mobile payment service that allows customers to send and receive money with a mobile phone number, which has sparked The Payments Council to work on a similar project. And the three leading mobile operators in the UK – EE, Vodafone and O2 – are working on a joint project under the name Weve, one of the aims of which is to develop standardised technology for ‘digital wallets’ on mobile.

These industry innovations reflect the changing attitude and behaviour by consumers to cashless payments. Barry Clark, account director at Future Foundation, which identified the trend towards a cashless society in its recent report into the changing face of payments, explains that this move towards digital is a “banking nirvana” for brands, since replacing cash with electronic payments takes high costs out of the system.”

These mobile enablers will effectively cover the small services and contractor’s market for the cashless society. In addition, digital payment terminals like iZettle and Square (created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey), have brought in most small traders, including taxi drivers, plumbers etc, and street side retailers – meaning that the barrier for entry into the new cashless society has been effectively dissolved.

The Socialist ‘Oyster’

The darker aspect of a cashless society, is one which few are debating or discussing, but is actually the most pivotal in terms of scial engineering and transforming communities and societies. In London, the electronic touch payment Oyster Card was introduced in 2003, initially for public transport, and since that time the card has been co-opted to be used for other functions, as the UK beta tests the idea of an all-in-one cashless lifestyle solution.

Ironically, and alongside biometric chipping now in India, it’s the United States, supposedly the birthplace of modern capitalism, who is beta testing its own socialist technocracy.  As the ranks of the poor and unemployed grow and dollar inflation rises in America, more and more people are dependent on traditional ‘Food Stamp’ entitlements in order to feed their families. The US has now introduced its own socialist ‘Oyster’ to replace the old Food Stamp program. It’s called the ‘EBT’, which stands for “Electronic Benefit Transfer“, as a means of transferring money from the central government to people living below the poverty line. Advocate Mike Adams for Natural News describes it another way:

“EBT benefits have more than doubled during the Obama administration’s last four years, creating tens of millions of new dependents who now vote based almost entirely on who gives them the most handouts.

The purchase of vitamins is specifically prohibited by the EBT program. This is done as a way to keep EBT recipients sick and diseased while suffering from nutritional deficiencies, which is precisely what the federal government wants.

EBT cards create high-profit handouts to corporations, too: Pharmaceutical companies and the sick-care industry; Big Government which gets re-elected based on entitlement handouts; global banks which earn a percentage off every swipe; and even the processed junk food industry which preys upon nutritional ignorance of the poor.

In fact, for every dollar’s worth of food handed out to EBT recipients under the program, at least 50 cents is driven right into the profit coffers of wealthy corporations.”

Adams has pointed out the endgame here. Where collectivist technocrats are concerned, a global digital currency is not only a means for a centrally controlled economy, but also a centrally controlled society. And as Adams also pointed out, they can even control what you eat.

There’s also the small matter of  the Verichip, or ‘class 2′ implantable medical devise, an RFID chip already set to be implemented through Obamacare. It will transmit medical records, bank accounts, keyless entry and much more. The technology could be a $100 Trillion industry over the coming decade.

Bottom line: We’ve got a big problem when the state can – and will cut-off your electronic financial lifeline should you fall foul of the system. No negotiations, no gray areas – and definitely no place for a free individual in this type of globalist system.

Social Networks Gradually Supplanting Real Communities

In 2011 Facebook launched its own virtual currency, which was taken up immediately by the games developer industry. Facebook created it’s own internal digital market overnight. If customers didn’t like it, they had two choices – jump ship, or stay in the biggest market place. That’s a lot of power to wield, and you can wield it if you have the big numbers.

A severe lack of choice in the world of online communities has unwittingly(or not) positioned Facebook to play the roles of not only data collector, but also as banker, retailer, archivist and governor.

As 2012 comes to a close, many people have certainly become, in one way or another, sans border citizens of the Facebook Nation. In the future, one corporation or cartel’s success in capturing a near global monopoly of membership to a particular online platform might give it the ability to dictate a digital  economic mandate to both producers and consumer.

The digital data industry now claims in a recent study by fast.MAP, that consumer confidence in sharing personal information has risen. But the reality is that most people do not know which data is being used and to who it is being shared or sold to. Most users are unknowingly trading “access” to networks, as well convenient speed of registration – for data privacy. We do this on a daily basis now.

It’s a question of speculation at this point how deeply the new digital currencies will be integrated into social networking giants like Facebook, or Second Life - where users are already buying virtual property with virtual currency, but few can deny that the potential for consolidation in the early 21st century is already there.

History Will Repeat Itself

Whenever the status quo is seen as a failure, the architects of society will rarely allow the whole show to come to a grinding halt, for fear that new and non-centrally controlled organic systems of organisation will emerge. The ruling establishment will spare no opportunity to tell society this, over and over, making people truly believe that it is in their best interest to adopt whatever alternative is handed down to them. This is why, when faced with a crisis, society will almost always seek to implement a parallel alternatives, rather than rethink the whole system.

In 2008, the public had an opportunity to collapse the predatory banking system that has been trading insolvent and gambling on thin air. But the very same ruling establishment who engineered the crisis to  begin with, masterfully presented their own solution as the remedy by establishing the precedent of the state bailing out any gambling losses incurred by the banking community.

In the end society relented, and with help of pro-banking political leadership on both sides of the Atlantic, they adopted the pre-packaged belief that a cluster of bloated and corrupt financial institutions were simply too big to fail. Aside from being a massive redistribution of wealth upwards into the hands of the speculative elite classes, this was merely a test by the establishment to see how far they could go in robbing the public, pushing up inflation, hoovering up real assets, robbing pension funds and enslaving taxpayers to generations of debt the bankers created – all in one swoop.

It has long been the dream of collectivists and technocratic elites to eliminate the semi-unregulated cash economy and black markets in order to maximise taxation and to fully control markets. If the cashless society is ushered in, they will have near complete control over the lives of individual people.

The financial collapse which began in 2007-2008 was merely the opening gambit of the elite criminal class, a mere warm-up for things to come. With the next collapse we may see a centrally controlled global digital currency gaining its final foothold.

The cashless society is already here. The question now is – how far will society allow it to penetrate and completely control each and every aspect of their day to day lives?

http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/11/29/the-cashless-society-is-almost-here-and-with-some-very-sinister-implications/

saved

A cashless society and fingerprint payments are on the horizon

The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and Nexus USA have partnered on a biometrics programme, which may one day lead to a cashless society.

The programme makes South Dakota School of Mines & Technology the first in the world to test life as a biometrics campus using foil-proof biocryptology that goes beyond a fingerprint to read multiple layers into the skin and detect haemoglobin in the blood.

The patented technology on the back-end turns each finger scan into a series of valueless numbers that change every time the finger is introduced.

Data encryption ensures security, as the numbers can’t be reproduced in a meaningful way, not by merchants, law enforcement, hackers or even Nexus Smart Pay.

The Nexus Smart Pay pilot programme at the school of mines and technology is being tested by 50 students and four faculty members at two locations on campus.

Consumers deposit money into an account, with which they associate their biometric data. Mines students and faculty members pay for goods with a simple scan of the finger; no cash, credit, debit or ID cards or pin codes necessary.

Biocryptology, in part, reads several layers deep into the skin using radio frequency. The technology can be applied to other applications, including physical and logical access.

Super secure
It also protects against identity theft, as fewer forms of identification are needed to be carried on a person and the system operates in a highly secure, closed and uniquely encrypted environment.

“Advancing technology to transform lives is what we do at the School of Mines, and we are proud to be not only the first university but indeed the first organisation of any kind in the world to pilot this programme,” said the school's acting president Duane Hrncir.

“We are excited about being on the front-end of this technology. It’s a natural fit for us to partner with Nexus USA and Hanscan.” Nexus USA is a subsidiary of Spanish-based Hanscan Identity Management, which is owned by entrepreneur and oil tycoon Klaas Zwart, also a Formula 1 enthusiast who has built his own racing resort in Marbella, Spain.

Zwart visited South Dakota School of Mines & Technology's campus in September, spending time with the school's own Formula Hardrocker Racing SAE team.

Some of the school's students are participating in the biometric pilot programme.

“Nexus needed a place that was going to be technologically advanced enough to handle this and with a student population savvy enough.

We hope they will give us some feedback on how to make this a better product and to find a better way to help market it. This is an innovative university, and we really need to show the world,” said Al Maas, Nexus USA’s president.

“The convenience factor is huge. It’s safe, and I believe it’s going to accelerate fast. We’re in tune with the technology age. Look at how the fax went to email and then to our cellphones.

Within three years we’ve gone from making calls to taking care of everything we need in our lives,” Maas said. – Gadget.co.za

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-23-ill-pay-by-fingerprint

Yet another of their test beds.

Don't forget about the microchip in Obamacare set to take effect in 2 months.

No, it is NOT a mandantory requirement to take it(as we discussed here last year), but those who are insured under Obamacare and end up getting treatment for CERTAIN illnesses will need one of these implants as it will keep up with their personal medical data.

This is another form of control b/c their personal medical information will get intruded into. And no, this is NOT some form of the mark of the beast, FYI.

Bieber Picked To Sell Kids On Benefits Of Cashless Society

This month, Justin Bieber begins marketing a prepaid card designed to promote responsible teen spending to his millions of fans. He’ll take to social media to spread his message about the SpendSmart MasterCard from a company called BillMyParents, Inc. “There’s probably no single individual out there that can send this message, that can turn a brighter spotlight on this message, then Justin Bieber,” said Mike McCoy, chief executive officer of BillMyParents, Inc. Bieber, who turned 19 Friday, began his career as a YouTube sensation. Now he has more than 51 million Facebook friends and 30 million Twitter followers, making him a perfect and powerful front man for new world order elitists.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/Bieber-Endorsed-Prepaid-Card-Aims-to-Teach-Kids-About-Responsible-Spending-194361071.html

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39790.html
Apr 04, 2013
Is Bitcoin New World Order Plot For A World Currency?

Justin O’Connell writes: As a general rule, if anything is covered en masse by the mainstream media, then I tend to believe that which I am watching is actually one long promotional spot.

The same could potentially be said for Bitcoin as over the past months its popularity has grown so much that “anarcho-capitalist...Libertarian...Freedom Fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and Central Banks,” Dollar Vigilante Chief Editor, Jeff Berwick, has been on CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and BBC, and other mainstream outlets.

What brought on this sudden attention? No, not our anarcho-capitalism, but our announcement of the world’s first BitcoinATM.

So, is Jeff just a patsy so that the New World Order can bring in a digital currency? I began wondering this myself, and I came to what I think is a reasonable conclusion.

What many skeptics fail to understand is that the so-called New World Order – with its global governance, fiat currencies and so on – has already, for the most part, been implemented on a global scale. Especially economically. For instance, 95%+ of fiat money today is digital, and it's all based on the Federal Reserve System, thus creating one worldwide currency with lots of different designs on the actual notes supposedly representing the various cultural backgrounds of nation-states.

Despite nearly everything being digital already, there are mainstream technologies that go above-and-beyond, aiming to rule out the need for cash.

One particular app for this cashless society, above-and-beyond credit and debit, is called Square, and was developed by Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder. According to CNN, “this is a telltale signs that the mobile-payments revolution has arrived.” CNN writes, as anyone who has studied American consumers know, “changing the way Americans pay for stuff is going to be really hard work.”

But Bitcoin is turning out to be a force to be reckoned with. For instance, in comparison to long-time friends of the liberty movement, gold and silver, Bitcoin seems to have been the play to make over the past six months and beyond. For months, besides today's drop from $150-$115, after running to $150 from $105, our charts over at Gold Silver Bitcoin have shown a bimetallic standard precipitously dropping relative to Bitcoin.

The CNN article surmises that,

“Paying by phone will be as transformative as the advent of the credit card in the 1950s. It will change the way we shop and bank. With powerful smartphones and tablets taking center stage on both sides of the checkout counter, it will reshape the relationship between buyer and seller. Not only will the phone or the tablet become a wallet for consumers, but it will also turn into a credit card reader and a register for merchants. Shoppers will use their mobile device as a coupon book, a comparison-shopping tool, and a repository of those unwieldy loyalty cards they carry from everyone from giant retail chains to the corner bakery. And your smartphones will serve as beacons that will alert a retailer when you walk into its store so that it can recommend products, show you reviews, or direct you to aisle five, where that beanbag chair you didn’t buy last week still beckons — and you can now have it for 10% off. You won’t even need a few singles to tip the valet or pay the dog walker, because they’ll take mobile payments too.”

This basically explains the Bitcoin experience. One big difference? While CNN assumes a central authority, Bitcoin does not. With big players like AT&T, Verizon, Visa, Mastercard, Google, Microsoft, and eBay’s PayPal unit investing in billions in digital payment solutions,  it is no surprise that the mainstream media is serving the idea to the public domain in kind and uncritical ways. One of their assumptions is a monopoly on the technology by some corporation friendly to compromising. While the mainstream press has been unable to ignore Bitcoin, it certainly has been critical of Bitcoin being prone to hackers. Sure, a great many people have lost bitcoins. But, imagine if the general population had to become their own banks. Most of them would get eaten right away by sharks in the economic waters.

The CNN article champions the ease of digital transactions, and the time saved. Bitcoin is surely faster:

“While this revolution will be powered by complex technology, its ultimate effect will be to greatly simplify things for consumers. Think about my experience at Grumpy. While I had to fiddle with my phone ahead of time — to upload my credit card to the Square app and to authorize it to talk to the Grumpy register — once there, the phone never left my pocket. All I had to do was order my cappuccino.”

The article portends that “a cashless future is more real than many suspect.” According to the global head of mobile at Visa, “financial institutions are going to have a big role to play.”

 “We are, I think, on a precipice of some fundamental change in the way money is exchanged between consumers and businesses,” Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said as she opened the first of a string of hearings one year ago on cashless ways.

The Federal Reserve found that 12 percent of cell phone users had already made a payment through their phones, and almost two-thirds of technology experts surveyed by the Pew Center on Internet and American Life said they expected mobile payments to eclipse cash and credit cards by 2020.

But, Square and similar technologies are different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin has caught on with a younger generation that, as Trace Mayer once put it to me (to paraphrase), “grew up in a digital sea. [The younger generation] are fish in a digital sea, whereas the older generation are snorkeling tourists.” In other words, p2p technology is a concept in-and-of itself for the Internet-literate. That goes a long way to explaining its popularity.

As the late Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster asked about gold and silver relative to fiat, “where else are you going to go” in a time of ubiquitous deceit? Bitcoin offers yet another alternative to what I’ve coined a “rebel’s portfolio” already heavy in silver and gold.

The pseudonymous nature (read: not totally anonymous) of Bitcoin does associate IPs with wallets. But, the paper-trail is a more obtuse alternative to the traditional bank account. The Powers That Be focus intensely on record-keeping, the historical record shows this, and so any added time-cost for their zeroing-in on you acts as the new privacy.

The popular appeal of Bitcoin – its p2p foundation – is as simple as first-language to the younger generation. Trace explains this well. Max Keiser recently said that he called gold in 2008, and people asked “What if the government confiscates my gold?” To which Max Keiser responds, “What you should have been asking yourself is, 'What if the government confiscates my bank account?'” He then goes on: “Since $5 per BTC I’ve been recommending Bitcoin and many of you asked, ‘What if the government shuts off the Internet?’” Max Keiser answers thus: “What you should have been asking yourselves is, ‘What if the government shuts down the banks?”

And so, there are fundamental differences between the digital payment technologies pursued publicly by TPTB, and Bitcoin. This is what caught the eye of so many tech-savvy and Austrian-minded individuals across the world, but largely concentrated in the US and greater North America. Now, with Bitcoin skyrocketing from $9.31 last Fall to $150 today, the power of the Internet has never been clearer.

Bitcoin is a bet on the Internet. And, if you read our recent TDV Homegrown issue, you might have learned something about the Egyptian experience with a government using the "internet kill switch." I wrote:

“Over one year ago, the Egyptian government cut off approximately 88% of the country’s internet access. Here is what happened: The government owned the biggest Internet provider in the nation, and only had to contact a few other companies to make this happen. The government ordered the shutdown of nearly all Internet access within Egypt. Ninety-three percent of Egypt’s networks went down. One of the only connections to the Internet that was not blocked belongs to Noor Data Network, the ISP used by the Egyptian (stock) Exchange.”

I then went over some of the ways Egyptians worked around this Internet shutdown, as well as the likelihood of it happening in the US. The conclusion of the article was bullish for the Internet, for the Internet is a vibrant and evolving system. It is crucial to everyone's way of life, and we see this with centralized and decentralized payment solutions. The Internet will continue to be defended by its users and impinged upon by its self-appointed overseers. It's a battle in which any Dollar Vigilante would delightfully indulge.

Thoughts on the New Cashless Society

To say that living without cash has been the stuff of legend would be an exaggeration … but only a slight one. And the reality may come sooner than we think.

For literally hundreds of years, the thought of a society without cash, or money at all, has been on the minds of utopian philosophers, financial activists, anarchists and other groups, usually upset at the limitations and abuses of a representative money system. During most of this time, “cashless” — often literally “moneyless” — was a hallowed vision in the minds of some but, being virtually impossible to implement in a society beyond the near-tribal agrarian state, it was pretty much all talk.

Well, it’s back, this time driven by the intersection of consumer, banking, commerce and mobile automation forces that together may make its realization more likely than ever and of major importance to our burgeoning mobile automation world.

rest: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/thoughts-on-the-new-cashless-society-020889.php

Video: Bitcoin virtual currency booms
http://news.yahoo.com/video/bitcoin-virtual-currency-booms-152532534.html
11/28/13

Bitcoin has broken a new record with the price for the digital currency topping $1,000 for the first time - compared to $13 around a year ago. Its value jumped after US senators described it as a valid means of exchange, but with an uncertain legal status and worries over its security and volatility, it faces an unsteady future. Hayley Platt reports.

Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom

Econgularity, shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly word I created to describe an unfortunate approaching moment in time when our current technological snooping prowess, the ease of big data manipulation and our sprint to a cashless economy will converge. This will happen in such a way as to permit governments to exercise incredibly powerful control over all human behavior.

While this may sound like a paranoid doomsday scenario to some, as a real world finance professional, I believe that this scenario is not only eminently possible, but most of the technology is already available — albeit not yet fully marshaled — to frighteningly make it reality.

Technological advances have led to the creation of algorithms that can instantaneously review financial transactions, determining the nature, location and even the appropriateness of a purchase decision. These have been freely used by credit- and debit-card companies.

Cardholders already encounter this technology when they receive fraud alerts after a transaction that looks out of kilter with the particular consumer's normal purchasing patterns. The technologies can thus serve to protect consumers. That said, they have already been used to control consumer behavior. In 2010, Visa and MasterCard, bowed to government pressure — not even federal or state law — and banned all online-betting payments from their systems. This made it virtually impossible for these gambling sites to continue operating regardless of their jurisdiction or legality. It is not too far-fetched to wonder if the day might come when the health records of an overweight individual would lead to a situation in which they find that any sugary drink purchase they make through a credit or debit card is declined. Sounds far-fetched but maybe not so.

You might think then that the person can always pay cash and remain outside the purview of these technologies. This may be the case for the moment, but we are well on the road to becoming a cashless society. According to a MasterCard study, 80 percent of U.S. consumer transactions are electronic. In Sweden, one observer estimates that only 3 percent of transactions are made with currency. In fact, the decline in cash use has become so pronounced in Sweden that homeless beggars have been given card readers by Situation Stockholm to sell freely distributed newspapers and to receive alms, since potential donors no longer carry cash. Governments and central banks are also subtle supporters of a cashless society as there are indeed costs to producing currency and coins. Monetary policy could also be much more efficiently executed without currency circulating, since it would then be easy to implement negative interest-rate policies. But there is also a sinister risk to a cashless society.

This point comes when a society goes cashless and the potential for econgularity is at its highest. A singularity is defined as the point in which technological advancement will "radically change human civilization and perhaps even human nature itself." It is impossible to know if this will actually happen, but a cashless society would certainly give governments unprecedented access to information and power over citizens. Currently, we have little evidence to indicate that governments will refrain from using this power. On the contrary, the U.S. government is already using its snooping prowess and big-data manipulation in some frightening ways.

The technological command of the National Security Agency has been widely reported on and does not need repeating here. Suffice it to note, that it would be no challenge for the NSA or certain other government agencies to monitor any company or consumer transaction in real time, if it so desired.

To provide another example, the U.S. government is becoming very fond of seizing money from citizens first and asking questions later via "civil forfeiture." Amazingly, the government is permitted by law to do this even if it is only government staff members who have a suspicion, not proof, of wrongdoing. By seizing a citizen's or a firm's money, the victim/defendant has almost no choice but to settle. A case about civil forfeiture was recently argued in front of the Supreme Court in which the government seized all the money of a tiny family-owned grocery store on the suspicion that it was laundering cash because its cash deposits were below the $10,000 level, an occurrence that triggers a report to the government. By depriving companies and individuals of the cash to defend themselves, even innocent firms are under immense pressure to settle or to plead guilty. To make matters worse, the dramatic consolidation of the banking system has made it easier for the government to acquire information as there are fewer access points. For example, JPMorgan, one of America's largest and most powerful banks, is the size of more than 3,000 smaller banks combined, and the top four U.S. banks control about 60 percent of the U.S. banking deposits.
 
The U.S. government has also been using less dramatic means to limit the freedom of its citizens. In recent years, it made it increasingly difficult for companies to operate or individuals to transact by adding compliance hurdles for banks wishing to deal with certain categories of clients. By making it too expensive to deal with certain clients or sending the signal that a bank should not deal with a particular client or type of client, the government can almost assuredly keep that company or person out of the banking system. Banks are so critically dependent on government regulatory approval for their actions that observers like Warren Buffett, among many others, have recognized the government's immense power over banks. Recently, even JPMorgan, announced that it would be ending relationships with whole categories of clients that pose compliance challenges.

If current government trends continue, a cashless economy could thus very well lead to an econgularity. Imagine a future in which soon, a government staff member could suspect an individual of some misconduct, or perhaps deem that person's politics or speech unacceptable. It would take just a few keystrokes to order all financial institutions to decline any withdrawal or payment from that individual and to transfer any deposits or payments of that person to the government, or at least freeze any access to funds. Perhaps this would need to be reviewed by a secret court that would approve 99.7 percent of all requests, but would provide a veneer of due process. It is fair to think that the targeted individual might starve to death. This could be insured by cutting off access to the payment system of anyone suspected of helping the targeted individual.

While bitcoin, a private synthetic cyber currency, might seem like an antidote to this scenario, it, too, requires connectivity, which can be subject to monitoring. Further, the exchange of bitcoin to the currency of the country in question can be regulated in ways that could limit or even end its utility. Testimony by regulators to the U.S. Senate on Nov. 18th that the government can deal with bitcoin via the existing currency transaction surveillance laws and surveillance methods in place is a pretty good indication that U.S. agencies could also envelop bitcoin via meta-data and behavioral analysis.
 
It is by no means certain that such a dystopian outcome will occur in a cashless society. It could be that certain countries such as Sweden can make the leap without any adverse consequences. But my fear is that some governments will find it irresistible to take much greater control of the everyday behaviors of their citizens simply because they can.

There are certainly positive outcomes that can be obtained by going cashless. For example, banning sale transactions of cigarettes or sugary drinks or stopping cardholders from overeating, gambling, or whatever other vice is targeted, could lead to a decrease in these vices and their associated problems. A decrease in those problems could positively impact other areas, like, for example, our nation's health-care system. A cashless society would probably also mean less street crime. Yet in return for these benefits, there is an incalculable cost to our humanity. We would lose our freedom to make decisions. It is easy to imagine a totalitarian regime using these tools to great harm. Given current U.S. government policies, it is also very easy to imagine even a liberal government such as our own, being sorely tempted to use the confluence of these technologies. And once used, because they are so very, very powerful, even liberal governments will be enticed into using them until there is pretty complete monitoring and control of every transaction.

So now is the time to urge Congress to repeal civil forfeiture and to forbid government agencies from intruding on the financial payments of U.S. citizens or companies without due process unless it is a matter of national security or imminent harm. We can also hope that the Supreme Court will find civil forfeiture to be unconstitutional as it should be viewed. By putting such strictures in place today we can change the trajectory of our current path. On a day-to- day basis, we should also decrease out debit- or credit-card use to preserve the market share of currency in our economy and stop the demise of cash. There are lots of other benefits to this as spending real cash out of our pockets makes us consider our expenditures more carefully and increases our savings rate.

Philosopher and economist Adam Smith observed that we are all economic beings in the sense that our essence as humans stems from our ability to make fair trades for our labor or our products. We make these transactions in the presence of the usually benevolent "invisible hand," as Smith called it in his book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." The invisible hand optimizes our total production, and, by and large, fosters our freedom. A "visible hand" monitoring every single transaction we make could be one of the greatest — and least expected — threats to freedom we have ever encountered in human history. This is the threat of econgularity.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101266173

Nigeria's Futuristic National ID Cards Are Also Debit Cards
May 2013

The latest in financial innovation is coming from Nigeria--and it blessedly doesn't involve elaborate Internet scams. Nigeria's government, instead, is teaming up with MasterCard to run a pilot program which would turn the country's national ID cards into debit cards.

MasterCard and the Nigerian National Identity Management Commission made the government debit card announcement at the World Economic Forum on Africa on Wednesday. 13 million combination government ID cards/debit cards will be rolled out over the next year; Nigeria has a population of approximately 167 million. The ID cards, which contain demographic and biometric data belonging to each Nigerian citizen encoded on a microchip, will be linked to bank accounts. When the cards are used at stores or kiosks, cashiers will be able to verify the buyer's identity using both the regular photo identification and the biometric chip-encoded information.

For Nigeria, which is undergoing an economic boom fueled by new businesses and mobile phones, the worry is that ethnic violence and omnipresent corruption could slow down growth. Due to the tracking capabilities, security, and built-in paper trail of cashless currency, the Nigerian government feels debit card payments could be a solution. After the initial 13 million cards are given to pilot testers, the government hopes to deploy 120 million ID cards/debit cards once the scheme proves workable.

“The initial rollout in Nigeria of 13 million MasterCard-branded National Identity Smart Cards with electronic payment capability--followed by a nation-wide rollout of potentially 120 million cards to all adult citizens--will allow cardholders to deposit funds on the card, receive social benefits, pay for goods and services, withdraw cash from all ATMs that accept MasterCard, and engage in many other financial transactions that are facilitated by electronic payments,” MasterCard's Michael Miebach told Fast Company via email. “In addition to the various functionalities of a Smart ID, the scheme will allow Nigerians, 70% of whom currently having no back account, to participate in the global economy.”

Nigeria's Access Bank has signed on to initially issue the cards, with Unified Payments serving as the payment processor. Other banks have agreed to issue the ID cards/debit cards as well. Beyond making things easier for the government, they also have the potential to cause a banking boom in Nigeria by connecting the unbanked with bank accounts. Of note is the fact that, because the Nigerian cards use chip-and-pin technology, they are more sophisticated than American debit or credit cards.

While combination identification cards and debit cards might seem like a privacy advocate's nightmare, some experts feel they have amazing potential. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, told Fast Company that “The reality is that combating poverty means finding ways to get people access to basic financial services and that can't really happen without money in electronic form. It's not a panacea, obviously, and no one can predict if this particular program will succeed or flop. But that doesn't change the fact that services of this sort are desperately needed.”

According to World Bank statistics, Nigeria has a massive 7.3% GDP growth rate but 62.6% of the population lives below the poverty line.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3009549/nigerias-futuristic-national-id-cards-are-also-debit-cards

So it looks like the middle class is ALMOST NON-EXISTENT in Nigeria(at least from what figures they've released made it look like). A booming GDP but the majority live below the poverty line?

Rev 13:16  And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
Rev 13:17  And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

When this prophesy comes to pass midway through the 7 year time of Jacob's trouble - notice they say rich and poor...hhhmmm...doesn't say anything about the middle class/in between people, does it?

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/2-vegas-hotels-accept-bitcoins-gambling-still-requires-hard-cash-2D11968195?ocid=msnhp&pos=6
2 Vegas hotels to accept bitcoins -- but gambling still requires hard cash
1/21/14

Las Vegas is getting one more novelty. Starting this week, patrons will be able to use the online currency bitcoin to pay for rooms, food and drinks at two downtown casinos.

The D casino and the city's oldest casino, the Golden Gate, will accept bitcoins at hotel front desks beginning Wednesday. The cybercurrency will also be accepted at the D's gift shop and two restaurants. U.S. dollars will remain the only currency accepted on the gambling floor.

Derek Stevens, the co-owner of the two casinos, said he's been intrigued by bitcoin for years and had talked with patrons who wondered if the casinos would use it.

He said it's tough to forecast how many patrons will pay for dinners and souvenirs with bitcoins, but predicted other casinos will soon adopt the currency.

"For us, it's going to be somewhat exciting to see what kind of impact it'll have," he said.

Not at the blackjack table, though

State regulators are unlikely to allow casinos to exchange chips for bitcoins any time soon, according to A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

The industry has not approached regulators about approving the currency for gambling.

"We would have to have an extremely high level of comfort with virtual currency of this kind in order for that to ever occur," Burnett said.

Bitcoin made its debut four years ago, and has been gaining momentum ever since, shedding its status as an internet oddity and approaching the mainstream.

Earlier this month, the Salt Lake City-based retailer Overstock.com became the first major retailer to accept the digital currency as payment for goods.

Unlike government-issued money, the value of bitcoin fluctuates rapidly. Like Overstock.com, the two casinos will use a bitcoin broker that immediately exchanges the digital coins into dollars.

Advocates describe bitcoin as the foundation of a Utopian economy: no borders, no change fees, no closing hours, and no one to tell you what you can and can't do with your money.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/two-bitcoin-exchange-operators-charged-money-laundering-scheme-162424352--finance.html
Two bitcoin exchange operators charged in money laundering scheme
1/27/14

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two men who operate bitcoin exchange businesses have been charged with money laundering for helping drug merchants exchange $1 million in cash for bitcoins, the digital currency, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.

Federal prosecutors in New York announced charges against Charlie Shrem and Robert Faiella, both operators of bitcoin exchange businesses, for attempting to sell $1 million in the digital currency to users of the underground black market website Silk Road, which was shut down by authorities in September.

According to the charging document, Shrem, 24, chief executive officer of the exchange BitInstant.com, changed cash into bitcoins for Faiella, 52, who ran an underground bitcoin exchange through the username BTCKing on Silk Road's website. The criminal complaint says that Shrem, in addition to knowing that Faiella's business was funneling money into Silk Road, also used Silk Road himself to buy drugs.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan said in a statement that authorities arrested Shrem on Sunday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Faiella was arrested on Monday at his home in Cape Coral, Florida.

The tech investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss invested $1.5 million in BitInstant last year. A spokeswoman for their firm, Winklevoss Capital, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case against Shrem is likely to deal a blow to the burgeoning community of bitcoin businesses because Shrem is a high-profile advocate for the technology. In addition to running BitInstant, he is vice president of the main bitcoin-focused trade group, the Bitcoin Foundation, according to the foundation's website and Shrem's LinkedIn profile.

A spokeswoman for the foundation declined to immediately comment on Shrem's arrest.

Shrem and Faiella were charged with conspiring to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. A spokeswoman for Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, said there was no information about legal representation available for either of the two men, who are expected to appear in court in New York and Florida. respectively.

Shrem has a home address in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

According to the charges, Faiella, going by "BTCKing" online, sold bitcoins to Silk Road users and passed on purchase orders he received from the site to Shrem, who filled them, transferring funds to Faiella's account at another bitcoin exchange service based in Japan.

The Japan-based exchange business is not named. One of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the world, MtGox, is based in Japan.

The charging document says that Shrem, who also ran BitInstant's compliance program for a little under two years, failed to report suspicious activity to regulators "with respect to numerous Bitcoin purchases" Faiella made from BitInstant.

Shrem's lawyer, Keith Miller at Perkins Coie in New York, was not immediately available for comment

Bitcoin is a digital currency whose value fluctuates according to demand by users. It is currently trading on MtGox at a level of $985 per unit. Users can transfer bitcoins to each other over the internet and store the currency in digital "wallets."

One in 10 Americans don’t carry paper money anymore

It could be a portent of the long-foretold cashless society, or just a sign of consumer confidence, but nearly one in 10 Americans no longer carry cash on a daily basis, according to a new report from Bankrate.com.

The survey, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, also found that 78 percent of Americans carried less than $50 in paper money, and that 49 percent carry $20 or less each day. Nine percent went without cash entirely, the survey found.

 "If we move to a truly cashless society, it won't be much of an adjustment for most Americans," Greg McBride, Bankrate.com's chief financial analyst, said in a press release. "The vast majority of Americans carry $50 or less on a daily basis, which seems to indicate that it's more out of necessity than a desire to pay with cash."

The survey also found that cash-carrying correlated to some degree with gender: Eighty-six percent of women reported carrying less than $50, compared to 70 percent of men.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101664403

Sweden Heading Toward Cash-Free Society

Sweden is on its way to becoming a cashless society, according to The Local.

The Swedish news organization reports that a new study says four of five purchases in Sweden are paid for electronically or with a debit card.

"Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia leads the world in terms of cashless trading," Bengt Nilervall said at the Swedish Federation of Trade (Svensk Handel).
 
They calculate there's an average of 260 card transactions per Swede per year.
 
The report says that as technology gets cheaper the trend is toward a completely cash-free society.


http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/finance/2014/October/Sweden-Heading-Toward-Cash-Free-Society/

Cash Is King No More As Mobile Payments Soar

Debit and credit transactions are taking the place of cash around the world — faster in developing countries than in North America and Europe, according to a recent report by Cap Gemini and RBS, the UK bank. Total non-cash transactions will reach 365.5 billion in 2013, growing at more than 20 percent in developing markets but only 5.6 percent in mature markets.

In some cases, developing countries will be able to leapfrog mature markets by moving directly to newer, more flexible technologies in payments, similar to their rapid adoption of wireless without the burden of wire legacy systems.

“Developing markets are establishing initiatives and upgrading infrastructure in order to boost non-cash volumes,” the report found. Mobile phones are making a huge impact and that will only increase as inexpensive smartphones proliferate.

“M-payments are expected to grow by 60.8 percent annually through to 2015. E-payments will decelerate to 15.9 percent growth during the same period. There is a gradual convergence of e- and m-payments as the distinction between the two diminishes.”

Although the report doesn’t hesitate to takes its measurements and projections to a single decimal point — that always suggests such precision? — the consultancy and the bank admitted being unsure of how to measure hidden payments.

“Unreported payment niches are being formed as payments move away from the highly regulated banking sphere. Although non-banks continue to pursue digital innovations and capture more of the payments market, we are yet to witness any concrete action on improving and reporting of data for the hidden market.”

The future of cards should be interesting as the study found that direct debit continues to grow, although cards still contributed most of the growth in non-cash transactions at 12.3 percent in 2012.

Debit cards have proven to be highly popular, especially among young people. Companies like Moven and Simple offer a combination of a debit card and a mobile phone app to help people track and control their spending. They have suggested a generational change and a wariness of credit. The World Payments report suggests another contributing factor — banks “reduced their focus on the credit card business to avoid an increase in bad debts” after the 2008 financial crisis.

Direct debit could be a sign of economic recovery.

“Growth in  direct debit in mature markets can be attributed to an improved economy and easing of credit flows compared to 2008.  In this improved environment, it is possible that consumers are less cautious about  the timing of their payments and are willing to pay  periodic monthly bills directly from their accounts.”

Checks have almost disappeared in many markets, making up just 4.8 percent on non-cash transactions in Europe in 2012. The U.S. remains a checking account powerhouse, a somewhat dubious distinction, accounting for 65.1 percent of global check transactions.

The report producers note that while the non-cash picture does not show substantial shifts, big changes may be on the way in developing markets because some countries are upgrading their infrastructure to boost the use of non-cash transactions. In the U.S., the Fed is expected to release a recommendation later this year on moving to a real-time payment infrastructure. Consultants count more than 20 countries that already have real-time payment systems, including Japan which has had one for 40 years and Mexico which recently developed its own.

Meanwhile nonbanks will increase the number of transactions they handle from 1.1 billion in 2012 to 7 billion in 2015, but banks will maintain the lion’s share reaching 39.9 billion in 2015.

“The mobile payments space is increasingly competitive with banks and non-banks striving for insightful data, market dominance and consumer loyalty.” In mobile, non-banks are expected to grow faster than banks. PayPal processed more than $27 billion in mobile payments in 2013, around 15 percent of total payment volumes, it said.

The data on the Walmart and American Express Bluebird prepaid card wasn’t any fresher than the Amex presentation at Money2020 last year, but the growth in the Starbucks card was impressive — 10 million customers making nearly 5 million transactions per week, totaling 250 million transaction in 2013, double the previous year. Talk about the value of a good brand!

Turning to the U.S., the report found significant innovation, such as Square, that could push change even if individual companies fail.

”While many of these fledgling companies could fail, they nonetheless open the way for others to play a bigger role in the payments. This is causing the overall payments industry to fragment.”

Earlier this week I reported on McKinsey’s view of the payment industry. Philip Bruno, a senior partner in McKinsey’s Global Payments Practice, noted that some of the players in payments now — such as Google and Apple — are huge companies with ample financial resources and will create a different of competitive threat than the payment startups from the days of Internet 1.0.

Cap Gemini ’s report said that despite areas of innovation “the U.S. market generally lags the rest of the world in certain other payments trends. Checks are still in high use, there is no real-time payment clearing and settlement system, and adoption of EMV technology has been slow.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2014/10/18/cash-is-king-no-more-as-mobile-payments-soar/

Why more American families are going cashless

The Sutton Family has gone from cash to plastic. They're just one of a growing number of families using less cash for everyday spending.

According to mom Julia Sutton, "We don't deal with a lot of cash. Even their lunches are now automated through credit cards, so they're very used to this and not used to cash."

Buying lunch, shoes, even an iPad, the Sutton children make purchases on their own from a weekly allowance they get on a card instead of cash. Their parents use a mobile app or go online to transfer money into each child's account. Then Bridget, Hannah and Samantha Sutton use their "allowance card" to spend their allotment.

Research shows that using cash isn't all that cheap. The cost of using cash to consumers, business and governments is about $200 billion a year in everything from ATM fees to theft to lost tax revenue. For the average American family, that's more than $1,700 a year, according to Tufts University.

Allowance Manager founder Dan Meader said using plastic and tracking spending not only saves families money, it helps children learn how to make transactions in an increasingly cashless society.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102260717

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=29776
SWEDISH ‘IMPLANT PARTY’ SEEKS TO PLACE RFID MICROCHIPS IN 10,000 PEOPLE
NTEB News Desk | January 8, 2015 | 18 Comments

“Curiosity is one of the biggest drivers for us humans. I come from a maker hacker culture and I just want to see what I can do with this.”

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:16,17

The bible clearly teaches that, after the Rapture, a time of great Tribulation will come upon the whole world. There will rise the Antichrist, who will force everyone to receive his mark, the mark of the beast. What is happening now in Sweden in is not that mark, but mental conditioning to receive the mark when it comes.

By day there were tech entrepreneurs, students, web designers and IT consultants – but that night they were going to be transformed into cyborgs. It may sound like the beginning of a science-fiction novel, but in fact it is a recollection of real events, by bio-hacker Hannes Sjoblad.

He organised the so-called implant party, which took place in late November and was one of several he has arranged. At it, eight volunteers were implanted with a small RFID (radio frequency identification) chip under the skin in their hand. Mr Sjoblad also has one.

He is starting small, aiming to get 100 volunteers signed up in the coming few months, with 50 people already implanted. But his vision is much bigger.

“Some people are horrified by this. They see it as completely crazy and have a deep unease about where technology is taking us and we have to be sensitive to people’s feelings. source

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/business/12-Jan-2015/nordic-countries-point-the-way-to-cashless-societies
1/12/15
Nordic countries point the way to cashless societies

STOCKHOLM/OSLO: Nordic countries are leading a shift by rich nations towards cashless societies, providing a test case for whether the lower cost and convenience of using cards and smartphones for payments outweigh the risks of fraud and some people being left behind.

Helped by wide use of computers even among the elderly, broad trust in the state and big business and only small black economies, people in Sweden and neighbouring countries are fast embracing cards, the Internet and apps for financial transactions, and forsaking notes and coins.

“We are headed more and more for a cashless society,” said Jan Digranes, a director at Finance Norway, which represents banks and other financial institutions.

Sweden, home of music streaming firm Spotify and the Candy Crush mobile phone game, ranks top in the European Union for card payments, with 230 transactions per inhabitant in 2012, just above Denmark and Finland and well ahead of Britain on 167, Germany 39 and Italy 28, according to the European Central Bank.

Non-EU members Norway and Iceland are also among top users of cards worldwide, their central banks say.

For banks and businesses, the big benefit is lower costs.

A report by the Norwegian central bank last month said the total cost of each cash transaction — including handling notes and coins in banks — was estimated at 7.1 crowns ($0.92) against only 4.1 crowns per card transaction.

For consumers, abandoning cash is often about convenience, though some are worried the poor, elderly and disabled can lack access to technology and credit, or just prefer notes and coins.

Swedes often make the smallest purchases, such as for chewing gum, with a credit card and can use the Swedish banks’ jointly-developed smartphone app Swish to repay a small debt to a friend. Another app allow drinkers to buy beers in a bar without queuing.

In the Stockholm subway, it is impossible to buy a ticket with cash, while some unemployed people selling street magazines now also accept electronic payments.

Mike Shabwan, selling flowers on a Stockholm square, said sales had risen by 10 percent since he started use the Swedish service iZettle in his smartphone to accept card payments. “And it is also cheaper and easier for me because the money comes directly into the bank,” he said.

In Denmark, “MobilePay” — an app launched by Danske Bank to allow payments via a smartphone — was judged by public radio as the best new word of the year for 2014. It now has 1.8 million users in a nation of 5.6 million people.

But Jarl Dahlfors, chief executive of cash handling firm Loomis, says the cashless trend may have gone too far for “unbanked people” such as many elderly.

And “do we really want everything we buy to be registered?” he asked, touching on the loss of privacy involved in switching from cash purchases to card and online payments.

Then there are the risks of electronic fraud.

According to Swedish Justice Ministry data, electronic fraud has doubled in the country in the past decade to about 140,000 cases in 2013. The boom is partly because a successful Internet-based computer scam can quickly generate thousands of cases.

To limit risks with MobilePay, Danske Bank advises clients to keep their phones locked when not in use and guard them as they would a credit card or cash.

In Norway, Mastercard is experimenting with a fingerprint identification system developed by Norway’s Zwipe, embedded into credit cards, hoping to make them more secure.

Anna Eriksson, spokeswoman of the Swedish Association of Senior Citizens, said elderly people need guarantees that cash can be used freely everywhere.

“Maybe we need incentives for older people to get an iPad to learn what’s positive about paying bills through a computer,” she said.

Still, there are silver linings, even in the rise of electronic fraud. Bank robberies — which can involve violence — fell in Sweden to a record low of five in 2012 from 16 the year before.

The Swedish central bank is far from phasing out cash; it will launch new notes and coins this year.

But it predicts the amount of cash in Sweden will fall by between 20 and 50 percent by 2020 compared with 2012.

And as the first generation of Internet users grows older, it seems likely that attachments to notes and coins will fade.

“It is an ongoing evolution,” said Peter Fredell, CEO of Swedish Seamless, which developed the payment app Seqr that handles around 3 billion transactions in stores, restaurants and e-trade annually.

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=30487
2/3/15
ALL AMERICAN CREDIT CARDS WILL DISAPPEAR IN 2015 AND BE REPLACED WITH RFID CHIP TECHNOLOGY

OCTOBER 2015: THE END OF THE SWIPE-AND-SIGN CREDIT CARD

“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:17 (KJV)

Business Insider magazine reports a startling revelation today:

“Every credit card in the U.S. will be replaced by October 2015 with new cards that contain the chip-and-PIN technology that the rest of the world has had for years, according to the Wall Street Journal. Both Visa and MasterCard are committed to the switch, which will render extinct the plastic in your wallets and purses right now. No more black magnetic stripes; no more signing on the dotted line.” source

The new EMV credit card system in the U.S. is set to be rolled out by October, 2015. Also going away is the ability to sign for your purchases, that will no longer be necessary.

THE MARK OF THE BEAST TECHNOLOGY SYSTEM IS EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK TODAY
Instead, you will enter a PIN to verify that you are the holder of the card. Removing the human element is one more step in the march towards the Mark Of The Beast system that will be in place during the Tribulation under the Antichrist.

Obviously, all this is leading to a microchip being placed inside every human being, which would be the only way to guarantee that your card will not be lost or stolen.

“Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.” Jeremiah 30:7 (KJV)

Make no mistake about it, this will happen within our lifetime, within our generation. We are the generation that will see the Rapture of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the unsaved who will experience the time of Jacob’s trouble that will follow that event.

Just like God used Noah to warn the people for 120 years and then, in an instant, sent the first drop of rain that began The Flood. So now is God using His people, His watchmen, to warn and warn and warn until you are nearly exhausted from hearing about it. Until…

…Guess what comes next?

http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12691
Aspen Snowmass' Skiers Use RFID Lift Tickets to Pay for Food, Rentals
Visitors can now utilize their lift tickets to make purchases at restaurants, stores and rental offices, while ski instructors can use the technology to track class sizes.

Feb 09, 2015—When Colorado winter resort Aspen Snowmass launched a high-frequency (HF) RFID system provided by Skidata USA in 2008—which included HF RFID tags in all of its lift tickets, as well as RFID gates at its lifts—the lines were shortened and skiers were able to spend more time on the slopes and less time in queues. The solution was so beneficial that the resort, which includes hotels, restaurants and ski slopes on four different mountains, sought to expand its use of RFID to restaurants and stores as part of what it calls its Resort Charge program.

During the course of the past six years, the resort (owned and operated by Aspen Skiing Co.) has installed 165 RF IDeas pcProx readers, a type of low-cost USB-connected reader, at its restaurants and stores, as well as for use by its ski school and NASTAR race program. Since Nov. 1, at the start of the 2014-15 ski season, 4,048 guests have opted to use their lift tickets as a payment method onsite, according to Rob Blanchard, Aspen Skiing Co.'s director of IT support services.

Aspen Snowmass includes four separate ski and snowboarding areas on four adjacent mountains in the Aspen area. It also offers numerous stores and restaurants on its slopes, and in the neighboring Snowmass Village. Since 2008, skiers have been using lift tickets made with passive HF 13.56 MHz RFID tags—provided by Skidata—compliant with the ISO 15693 standard (see Aspen Signs With Skidata, RTP for Integrated RFID/POS System). The tickets can be read as skiers pass through one of the 48 gates for accessing lifts on the four different slopes. Each gate has four antennas (two on each side) that can read the tags from a distance of a foot or more. As such, skiers can ski right through the gate and have their lift tickets read and approved before they board a lift.

The skiing company next considered how the tickets could be used to enable hands-free payments. Blanchard notes that skiers typically carry cash or a credit card in a pocket—either of which can become lost on the slopes, and can be time-consuming to locate and remove from a pocket at the point of sale (POS).

The resort had considered using readers provided by its existing vendor, in order to read tags at the restaurants' POS stations. However, the readers came with a serial port and cost more than $400 each, which the resort deemed too expensive. Instead, Aspen Snowmass approached Illinois-based technology solutions provider iTech Automation Inc., which recommended the pcProx readers, according to Paul Lemieux, iTech's vice president. The readers cost about $150 apiece; once they were all installed, Blanchard says, the savings based on using the less expensive pcProx readers was approximately $54,000.

The second advantage to the pcProx readers, Blanchard reports, was the USB port connection. He says he simply received the readers, applied a small configuration file to each one and plugged them into the POS terminals, after which they started working. (However, Lemieux notes, the readers now come with the configuration file already applied).

Greg Gliniecki, RF IDeas' founder, says the readers come with built-in functionality that captures the ID number encoded to the lift ticket's RFID tag, and then automatically forwards that information to Aspen Snowmass' POS-based software, via the USB connection and the user's keystrokes. The readers, he adds, "are designed to be plug-and-play."

When an Aspen Snowmass visitor buys a lift ticket, an employee at the ticket booth uses a pcProx reader to encode and commission the tag embedded in that individual's lift ticket. At that point, the guest is given the option to participate in the Resort Charge program. If he agrees to join, he provides his signature as well as his credit card number, which is then encrypted and stored in the Aspen database along with the unique ID number encoded to his lift ticket's tag.

If the skier visits the restaurant and makes a purchase, the RFID tag can typically be read through clothing, so that if he stores his lift ticket in a pocket on the arm of of his coat, he need only position his arm near the reader, and the tag ID number will be captured. He can then follow the prompts to approve the transaction and have it charged to his credit card.

Once the restaurant system was working well at the resort's 18 food establishments, Blanchard says, his company began considering the equipment-rental areas and retail stores that it operates. The firm installed the pcProx readers at POS locations within its stores in 2011, and at the rental locations the following year.

At the stores, as with the restaurants, when a guest makes a purchase, she can simply position her lift ticket near the reader plugged into the POS computer, or hand it to a salesperson, who will then read its tag using a pcProx reader.

In the case of a rental, an individual first proceeds to the rental office and is invited to use a computer, where she can either tap her Resort Charge lift ticket next to the reader plugged into the computer, or input her name, address, age, weight and height, as well as other information that helps to determine the sizes of equipment she will need. If she is using Resort Charge, her information is already stored in the system, and she can simply select her profile and print out the rental forms, then take them to the point of sale to receive the equipment and pay, again using her Resort Charge-enabled lift ticket.

Blanchard says he has tested the Resort Charge system's speed against that of the traditional method of inputting data to rent equipment, and has found that it can save 10 to 15 minutes per transaction. His family also uses Resort Charge, since they are regular skiers as well. In the past, he says, he would have had to dole out $12 in cash to each of his children to pay for classes, food or drinks on the slopes. "So, we would have to stop at an ATM each Saturday morning," he states, "then stop at a store to break the $20 so we could give each of them exactly $12." With Resort Charge, all the kids need are their lift tickets. "We set their passes up with Resort Charge. Now, they just hand their pass to the cashier for payment of their lunch."

Last year, the company also began using the RFID system to identify the number of ski students who take classes from each instructor. The trainers are paid according to how many students they have, so it is important to know the total number of individuals who head up the slope with each instructor—a number that can then be compared against the trainer's reported figures. To collect this data automatically, the teacher, carrying an RFID-enabled lift ticket, passes through a reader gate, followed by his class. He then circles back and moves through the gate again (after the last of his students has passed through). Later, Aspen's management can run a report showing the instructor's first scan of his own lift ticket, the scans of his students' tickets, and his ticket's second scan, thereby indicating the size of his class, and thus creating a record that can be used for payroll purposes.

This season at Aspen, Blanchard adds, the NASTAR ski race program is using a pcProx reader to identify racers, via the RFID tags in their lift tickets, as they come to the start, thereby automatically entering each individual into the timing software (see NASTAR Ski Program Speeds Up Racecourse Access). The resort continues to consider other use cases for the RFID technology, he notes, but is unable to describe any details at this time.

Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom

Econgularity, shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly word I created to describe an unfortunate approaching moment in time when our current technological snooping prowess, the ease of big data manipulation and our sprint to a cashless economy will converge. This will happen in such a way as to permit governments to exercise incredibly powerful control over all human behavior.

Tune in to CNBC's "Closing Bell" Friday at 3pm ET. Signature Bank Chairman Scott Shay will be on, talking about how close we are to becoming a cashless society and the huge threat it is to our freedom.

While this may sound like a paranoid doomsday scenario to some, as a real world finance professional, I believe that this scenario is not only eminently possible, but most of the technology is already available — albeit not yet fully marshaled — to frighteningly make it reality.

Technological advances have led to the creation of algorithms that can instantaneously review financial transactions, determining the nature, location and even the appropriateness of a purchase decision. These have been freely used by credit- and debit-card companies.

Cardholders already encounter this technology when they receive fraud alerts after a transaction that looks out of kilter with the particular consumer's normal purchasing patterns. The technologies can thus serve to protect consumers. That said, they have already been used to control consumer behavior. In 2010, Visa and MasterCard, bowed to government pressure — not even federal or state law — and banned all online-betting payments from their systems. This made it virtually impossible for these gambling sites to continue operating regardless of their jurisdiction or legality. It is not too far-fetched to wonder if the day might come when the health records of an overweight individual would lead to a situation in which they find that any sugary drink purchase they make through a credit or debit card is declined. Sounds far-fetched but maybe not so.

You might think then that the person can always pay cash and remain outside the purview of these technologies. This may be the case for the moment, but we are well on the road to becoming a cashless society. According to a MasterCard study, 80 percent of U.S. consumer transactions are electronic. In Sweden, one observer estimates that only 3 percent of transactions are made with currency. In fact, the decline in cash use has become so pronounced in Sweden that homeless beggars have been given card readers by Situation Stockholm to sell freely distributed newspapers and to receive alms, since potential donors no longer carry cash. Governments and central banks are also subtle supporters of a cashless society as there are indeed costs to producing currency and coins. Monetary policy could also be much more efficiently executed without currency circulating, since it would then be easy to implement negative interest-rate policies. But there is also a sinister risk to a cashless society.

This point comes when a society goes cashless and the potential for econgularity is at its highest. A singularity is defined as the point in which technological advancement will "radically change human civilization and perhaps even human nature itself." It is impossible to know if this will actually happen, but a cashless society would certainly give governments unprecedented access to information and power over citizens. Currently, we have little evidence to indicate that governments will refrain from using this power. On the contrary, the U.S. government is already using its snooping prowess and big-data manipulation in some frightening ways.

The technological command of the National Security Agency has been widely reported on and does not need repeating here. Suffice it to note, that it would be no challenge for the NSA or certain other government agencies to monitor any company or consumer transaction in real time, if it so desired.

To provide another example, the U.S. government is becoming very fond of seizing money from citizens first and asking questions later via "civil forfeiture." Amazingly, the government is permitted by law to do this even if it is only government staff members who have a suspicion, not proof, of wrongdoing. By seizing a citizen's or a firm's money, the victim/defendant has almost no choice but to settle. A case about civil forfeiture was recently argued in front of the Supreme Court in which the government seized all the money of a tiny family-owned grocery store on the suspicion that it was laundering cash because its cash deposits were below the $10,000 level, an occurrence that triggers a report to the government. By depriving companies and individuals of the cash to defend themselves, even innocent firms are under immense pressure to settle or to plead guilty. To make matters worse, the dramatic consolidation of the banking system has made it easier for the government to acquire information as there are fewer access points. For example, JPMorgan, one of America's largest and most powerful banks, is the size of more than 3,000 smaller banks combined, and the top four U.S. banks control about 60 percent of the U.S. banking deposits.

The U.S. government has also been using less dramatic means to limit the freedom of its citizens. In recent years, it made it increasingly difficult for companies to operate or individuals to transact by adding compliance hurdles for banks wishing to deal with certain categories of clients. By making it too expensive to deal with certain clients or sending the signal that a bank should not deal with a particular client or type of client, the government can almost assuredly keep that company or person out of the banking system. Banks are so critically dependent on government regulatory approval for their actions that observers like Warren Buffett, among many others, have recognized the government's immense power over banks. Recently, even JPMorgan, announced that it would be ending relationships with whole categories of clients that pose compliance challenges.

If current government trends continue, a cashless economy could thus very well lead to an econgularity. Imagine a future in which soon, a government staff member could suspect an individual of some misconduct, or perhaps deem that person's politics or speech unacceptable. It would take just a few keystrokes to order all financial institutions to decline any withdrawal or payment from that individual and to transfer any deposits or payments of that person to the government, or at least freeze any access to funds. Perhaps this would need to be reviewed by a secret court that would approve 99.7 percent of all requests, but would provide a veneer of due process. It is fair to think that the targeted individual might starve to death. This could be insured by cutting off access to the payment system of anyone suspected of helping the targeted individual.

While bitcoin, a private synthetic cyber currency, might seem like an antidote to this scenario, it, too, requires connectivity, which can be subject to monitoring. Further, the exchange of bitcoin to the currency of the country in question can be regulated in ways that could limit or even end its utility. Testimony by regulators to the U.S. Senate on Nov. 18th that the government can deal with bitcoin via the existing currency transaction surveillance laws and surveillance methods in place is a pretty good indication that U.S. agencies could also envelop bitcoin via meta-data and behavioral analysis.

It is by no means certain that such a dystopian outcome will occur in a cashless society. It could be that certain countries such as Sweden can make the leap without any adverse consequences. But my fear is that some governments will find it irresistible to take much greater control of the everyday behaviors of their citizens simply because they can.

There are certainly positive outcomes that can be obtained by going cashless. For example, banning sale transactions of cigarettes or sugary drinks or stopping cardholders from overeating, gambling, or whatever other vice is targeted, could lead to a decrease in these vices and their associated problems. A decrease in those problems could positively impact other areas, like, for example, our nation's health-care system. A cashless society would probably also mean less street crime. Yet in return for these benefits, there is an incalculable cost to our humanity. We would lose our freedom to make decisions. It is easy to imagine a totalitarian regime using these tools to great harm. Given current U.S. government policies, it is also very easy to imagine even a liberal government such as our own, being sorely tempted to use the confluence of these technologies. And once used, because they are so very, very powerful, even liberal governments will be enticed into using them until there is pretty complete monitoring and control of every transaction.

So now is the time to urge Congress to repeal civil forfeiture and to forbid government agencies from intruding on the financial payments of U.S. citizens or companies without due process unless it is a matter of national security or imminent harm. We can also hope that the Supreme Court will find civil forfeiture to be unconstitutional as it should be viewed. By putting such strictures in place today we can change the trajectory of our current path. On a day-to- day basis, we should also decrease out debit- or credit-card use to preserve the market share of currency in our economy and stop the demise of cash. There are lots of other benefits to this as spending real cash out of our pockets makes us consider our expenditures more carefully and increases our savings rate.

Philosopher and economist Adam Smith observed that we are all economic beings in the sense that our essence as humans stems from our ability to make fair trades for our labor or our products. We make these transactions in the presence of the usually benevolent "invisible hand," as Smith called it in his book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." The invisible hand optimizes our total production, and, by and large, fosters our freedom. A "visible hand" monitoring every single transaction we make could be one of the greatest — and least expected — threats to freedom we have ever encountered in human history. This is the threat of econgularity.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101266173

Citi Economist Says It Might Be Time to Abolish Cash



The world's central banks have a problem.

When economic conditions worsen, they react by reducing interest rates in order to stimulate the economy. But, as has happened across the world in recent years, there comes a point where those central banks run out of room to cut — they can bring interest rates to zero, but reducing them further below that is fraught with problems, the biggest of which is cash in the economy.

In a new piece, Citi's Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates.

Fundamentally, the ELB problem comes down to cash. According to Buiter, the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction?

Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates.

Buiter's note suggests three ways to address this problem:

        Abolish currency.

        Tax currency.

        Remove the fixed exchange rate between currency and central bank reserves/deposits.

Yes, Buiter's solution to cash's ability to allow people to avoid negative deposit rates is to abolish cash altogether. (Note that he's far from being the first to float this idea. Ken Rogoff has given his endorsement to the idea as well, as have others.)

Before looking at the practicalities of abolishing currency, we should first look at whether it could ever be necessary. Due to the costs of holding large amounts of cash, Buiter puts the actual nominal rate at which the move to cash makes sense as closer to -100bp. So, in order for a cash abolition to become necessary, central banks would need to be in a position where they wished to set nominal rates much lower than that.

Buiter does not have to go far to find an example of where a central bank may have wanted to set interest rates much lower to -100bp. He uses (a fairly aggressive) Taylor Rule to show that Federal Reserve rates should have been as low as -6 percent during the financial crisis.

It seems Buiter is correct: Sometimes strongly negative nominal rates are called for.

Buiter is aware that his idea may be somewhat controversial, so he goes to the effort of listing the disadvantages of abolishing cash.

        Abolishing currency will constitute a noticeable change in many people’s lives and change often tends to be resisted.

        Currency use remains high among the poor and some older people. (Buiter suggests that keeping low-denomination cash in circulation — nothing larger than $5 — might solve this.)

        Central banks and governments would lose seigniorage revenue.

        Abolishing currency would inevitably be associated with a loss of privacy and create risks of excessive intrusion by the government.

        Switching exclusively to electronic payments may create new security and operational risks.

Buiter dismisses each of these concerns in turn, finishing with:

    In summary, we therefore conclude that the arguments against abolishing currency seem rather weak.

Whatever the strength of the arguments, the chances of an administration taking the decision to abolish cash seem vanishingly small.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/citi-economist-says-it-might-be-time-to-abolish-cash

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/in-the-future-your-veins-could-replace-your-116644086459.html
4/19/15
In the Future, Your Veins Could Replace Your Passwords

Forget having to remember passwords for all of your favorite websites and apps. In the future, PayPal wants the very veins in your body to act as your password.

No, that’s not a typo. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, PayPal’s global head of developer evangelism, Jonathan Leblanc, says that traditional “external” methods of identifying people, such as passwords and even fingerprints, could eventually give way to things like vein and heartbeat recognition.

Basically, the patterns the veins make in your body and your exact heartbeat could be used to do things like make wireless payments or even log in to websites.

How does PayPal expect this to work? By having people embed special chips under your skin that can, “contain ECG sensors that monitor the heart’s unique electrical activity and communicate the data via wireless antennae to ‘wearable computer tattoos.’”

That’s not all, though. Leblanc also told the Journal that people could eventually be able to eat special sensors that identify you based on your glucose levels. What would power these internal sensors? Why, your own stomach acid, of course.

Why is this necessary? Because, as Leblanc points out, the current methods of user identification are simply too unreliable.

People forget their passwords or use passwords that are too simple to crack, while fingerprints and things like location verification can lead to false positives that let hackers get into your accounts.

This isn’t the first time the idea of putting passwords inside our bodies has been brought up. Motorola previously discussed using an electronic tattoo on your skin to identify users, as well as an edible “vitamin” that you would swallow and could then communicate with other gadgets.

And according to Forbes, the vitamin has already been approved by the FDA.

If this all sounds super sci-fi and a bit crazy, Leblanc completely understands. As he explained in the interview, it’ll be quite a while before people are actually comfortable with using any of these technologies.

And though PayPal is interested in them, the company isn’t saying it would use edible or injectable security methods in the future. It just wants to explore the possibilities.

The only problem I can see with this is that it will make binge-purchasing old Star Wars action figures at 3:00 in the morning way too easy. But that’s something we’ll all have to deal with eventually. Right?

Denmark moves closer to a cashless society

Denmark has moved one step closer to becoming the world's first cashless society, as the government proposes scrapping the obligation for retailers to accept cash as payment.

The Danish government has said that as of next year, business such as clothing retailers, restaurants and petrol stations should no longer be legally bound to accept cash payments.

The proposal is part of a package of economic growth measures, which are being released ahead of this year's Danish election. It aims to reduce costs and increase productivity for Danish businesses.

Finansrådet, a Danish finance industry lobbying group, says the change would free retailers from the cost of security, and the burden of managing change and notes.

Although it seems like a drastic step, the Danes are already moving away from paper and metal money.

Almost a third of the population uses an official Danske Bank app called MobilePay - it links your mobile to other users' phones or to a sensor at the till, allowing you to confirm payments with a simple swipe on your smartphone's screen.

Similar technologies like Paym are available in the UK, which allows users to transfer money to others by entering their mobile number. Google Wallet turns your phone into a contactless card, allowing you to tap your device against readers to transfer money - however, it is currently only available in the USA.

But both of these technologies are still yet to see the level of adoption that MobilePay has in Denmark.

There are fears that moving to totally cashless payments could increase the risk of fraud - in Sweden, a nation with one of the highest numbers of bank transactions per person in the European Union, cases of card fraud have doubled in the last decade.

However, Danske Bank has taken steps to fight fraud, by linking individuals' MobilePay accounts to their national insurance numbers.

The change would need to be approved in a vote at the Folketing, the Danish parliament, but the timing of the vote has not yet been set.

However, in a country where cashless payments are so common, it looks unlikely that the proposal will face much opposition...

The Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland lead the world in cashless payments - cash payments for even the smallest items, such as a packet of chewing gum, are commonplace.

In 2013, a Swedish bank robber left empty-handed, after he found out that the Stockholm bank he held up did not carry any cash.

Five of Sweden's six big banks now operate cashless branches where possible, and some predict the country could become cashless by 2030.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-moves-closer-to-a-cashless-society-10231995.html

How to end boom and bust: make cash illegal

Comment: Forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank would give the authorities far better tools to deal with recessions and economic booms, writes Jim Leaviss

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

 A proposed new law in Denmark could be the first step towards an economic revolution that sees physical currencies and normal bank accounts abolished and gives governments futuristic new tools to fight the cycle of “boom and bust”.

The Danish proposal sounds innocuous enough on the surface – it would simply allow shops to refuse payments in cash and insist that customers use contactless debit cards or some other means of electronic payment.

Officially, the aim is to ease “administrative and financial burdens”, such as the cost of hiring a security service to send cash to the bank, and is part of a programme of reforms aimed at boosting growth – there is evidence that high cash usage in an economy acts as a drag.

But the move could be a key moment in the advent of “cashless societies”. And once all money exists only in bank accounts – monitored, or even directly controlled by the government – the authorities will be able to encourage us to spend more when the economy slows, or spend less when it is overheating.

This may all sound far-fetched, but the idea has been developed in some detail by a Norwegian academic, Trond Andresen*.

In this futuristic world, all payments are made by contactless card, mobile phone apps or other electronic means, while notes and coins are abolished. Your current account will no longer be held with a bank, but with the government or the central bank. Banks still exist, and still lend money, but they get their funds from the central bank, not from depositors.

Having everyone’s account at a single, central institution allows the authorities to either encourage or discourage people to spend. To boost spending, the bank imposes a negative interest rate on the money in everyone’s account – in effect, a tax on saving.

Faced with seeing their money slowly confiscated, people are more likely to spend it on goods and services. When this change in behaviour takes place across the country, the economy gets a significant fillip.

The recipient of cash responds in the same way, and also spends. Money circulates more quickly – or, as economists say, the “velocity of money” increases.

What about the opposite situation – when the economy is overheating? The central bank or government will certainly drop any negative interest on credit balances, but it could go further and impose a tax on transactions.

So whenever you use the money in your account to buy something, you pay a small penalty. That makes people less inclined to spend and more inclined to save, so reducing economic activity.

Such an approach would be a far more effective way to damp an overheated economy than today’s blunt tool of a rise in the central bank’s official interest rate.

If this sounds rather fanciful, negative interest rates already exist in Denmark, where the central bank charges depositors 0.75pc a year, and in Switzerland.

At the moment it’s easy for individuals to avoid seeing their money eroded this way – they can simply hold banknotes, stored either in a safe or under the proverbial mattress.

But if notes and coins were abolished and the only way to hold money was through a government-controlled bank, there would be no escape.

Apart from the control over the economy, there would be many other advantages of a cashless society. Such a system is much cheaper to run than one based on banknotes and coins. Forgery is impossible, as are robberies.

Electronic money is an inclusive and convenient system, giving poor and rural sectors of an economy – where cash machines and bank branches may be few and far between and not all people have accounts – a tool for easy participation in the economy.

Finally, the “black economy” will be hugely diminished, and tax evasion made all but impossible.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/11602399/Ban-cash-end-boom-and-bust.html

Implants to aid payment with a wave of the hand

Is it retail therapy gone mad? The dawn of a new cyborg age? Or a new meaning to going down under?

Whatever the case, a fair proportion of Australians are receptive to technology mixing with their precious human organic flesh, if it means making payments at retail stores is easier.

A survey, commissioned by global payments firm Visa, found 25 per cent of Australians were “slightly interested” in having a commerce-oriented chip implanted in their skin.

Research firm UMR conducted the survey for Visa, interviewing 1000 local consumers.

A subcutaneous chip would let consumers pay at a retail terminal without a wallet, credit card, smartphone or smartwatch. They would simply wave their bare hand over a terminal.

The finding was revealed as Visa and University of Technology Sydney announced a partnership to explore the future of wearable technology. Visa’s research looked at the wearable technology Australian consumers were interested in using for payments.

Thirty-two per cent would be interested in paying with a smartwatch; 29 per cent with a smart ring, and 26 per cent with smart glasses.

It is little wonder Visa regards Australians as adventurous with tech. “Australians are among the world’s earliest adopters of new technology,” said George Lawson, Head of Emerging Products and Innovation for Visa in ANZSP.

There’s nothing new about implanting tags under the skin. The US firm VeriChip obtained approval to do just that more than a decade ago.

Their chip consisted of a tiny antenna and an identification number. It was designed to be implanted in the soft tissue between the thumb and index finger and detected by a radiofrequency identification (RFID) scanner.

Before you see the human species morphing towards a cyborg future, there is a cautious note. Research in the past has linked subcutaneous chips to cancers in laboratory animals at the implant site.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/implants-to-aid-payment-with-a-wave-of-the-hand/story-e6frgakx-1227368819195

Cashless Control Grid: 25% of Australians Would Get a Chip Implanted in Them to Pay for Stuff

Just wow.

People really have learned to love their high tech servitude.

Via Business Insider Australia:

    A mind-boggling 25% of Australians say they are at least “slightly interested” at the prospect of having a chip implanted in their skin that could be used for payments, new research has found.

    The research by credit card company Visa and the University of Technology Sydney found Australians are open to the prospect of paying for items using wearable tech including smart watches, rings, glasses and even a connected car. [emphasis added]

    “Australians are among the world’s earliest adopters of new technology,” Head of Emerging Products and Innovation for Visa in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, George Lawson said.

Think we’re being tracked and traced now? Why would you be interested in not only taking the mark but for a cashless control grid in the modern era of corruption we find ourselves swimming in? This is not only trusting to the point of idiocy, it’s literally voting for one’s own enslavement.

What happens when the government starts turning people’s chips off for not falling in line and being good little statist citizens? Have fun buying milk and bread then, Australians.

- See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/25-of-australians-would-totally-get-a-chip-implanted-in-them-to-pay-for-stuff_052015#sthash.LqwpFvQc.dpuf

Bank Of England Economist Calls For Cash Ban, Urges Negative Rates

Just three short years ago, Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane appeared a lone voice of sanity in a world fanatically-religious Keynesian-esque worshippers. Admissions in 2013 (on blowing bubbles) and 2014 (on Too Big To Fail "problems from hell") also gave us pause that maybe someone in charge of central planning might actually do something to return the world to some semblance of rational 'free' markets. We were wrong! Haldane appears to have fully transitioned to the dark side, as The Telegraph reports, he made the case for the "radical" option of supporting the economy with negative interest rates, and even suggested that cash could have to be abolished.

Speaking at the Portadown Chamber of Commerce in Northern Ireland, as The Telegraph reports, Mr Haldane's support for a possible cut in rates came as the Bank as a whole has signalled that the next move in rates would be up.

    Andy Haldane, one of the Bank’s nine interest rate setters, made the case for the "radical" option of supporting the economy with negative interest rates, and even suggested that cash could have to be abolished.

    He said that the "the balance of risks to UK growth, and to UK inflation at the two-year horizon, is skewed squarely and significantly to the downside".

    As a result, "there could be a need to loosen rather than tighten the monetary reins as a next step to support UK growth and return inflation to target".

But recent volatility in financial markets, prompted by China, and a decision by the US Federal Reserve to delay rate hikes, have pushed back expectations of the Bank's first rate rise to November 2016.

    Traditionally policymakers have resisted cutting rates below zero because when the returns on savings fall into negative territory, it encourages people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash.

Interestingly, one idea, Haldane told an audience of business owners in Northern Ireland, could be to scrap cash and adopt a state-issued digital currency like Bitcoin. Although widely reviled as the currency for drug dealers and criminals, Haldane said Bitcoin’s distributed payment technology had ‘real potential’. Which may explain the Fed's sudden fascination in the virtual currency.

NIRP - it would appear - is about to global.

So Haldane has gone from worrying that "financial markets were detaching themselves too materially from fundamentals" and fearing the "biggest risk to global financial stability right now it would be a disorderly reversion in the yields of government bonds globally," the BoE's chief economist has not only called for policies which will enable an even bigger bond bubble but will also remove freedom from the people to do what 'they' think is best with their capital. Indoctrination is complete (or more ominously, is there something Haldane sees that has driven him to this extremist perspective?)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-18/bank-england-economist-calls-cash-ban-urges-negative-rates

The War On Cash Is Advancing On All Fronts: "First They Came For The Pennies..."

The War on Cash is advancing on all fronts. One region that has hogged the headlines with its war against physical currency is Scandinavia. Sweden became the first country to enlist its own citizens as largely willing guinea pigs in a dystopian economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society. As Credit Suisse reports, no matter where you go or what you want to purchase, you will find a small ubiquitous sign saying “Vi hanterar ej kontanter” (“We don’t accept cash”):

Whether it’s for mulled wine at the Christmas market, a beer at the bar, even the smallest charge is settled digitally. Even the homeless vendors of the street newspapers Faktum and Situation Stockholm carry mobile card readers.

A similar situation is unfolding in Denmark, where nearly 40% of the paying demographic use MobilePay, a Danske Bank app that allows all payments to be completed via smartphone. With more and more retailers rejecting physical money, a cashless society is “no longer an illusion but a vision that can be fulfilled within a reasonable time frame,” says Michael Busk-Jepsen, executive director of the Danish Bankers Association.

World’s Biggest Cashless Laboratory

While Sweden and Denmark may be the two nations that are closest to banning cash outright, the most important testing ground for cashless economics is half a world away, in sub-Saharan Africa.

In many African countries, going cashless is not merely a matter of basic convenience (as it is in Scandinavia); it is a matter of basic survival. Less than 30% of the population have bank accounts, and even fewer have credit cards. But almost everyone has a mobile phone. Now, thanks to the massive surge in uptake of mobile communications as well as the huge numbers of unbanked citizens, Africa has become the perfect place for the world’s biggest social experiment with cashless living.

Western NGOs and GOs (Government Organizations) are working hand-in-hand with banks, telecom companies and local authorities to replace cash with mobile money alternatives. The organizations involved include Citi Group, Mastercard, VISA, Vodafone, USAID, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In Kenya the funds transferred by the biggest mobile money operator, M-Pesa (a division of Vodafone), account for more than 25% of the country’s GDP. In Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, the government launched a Mastercard-branded biometric national ID card, which also doubles up as a payment card. The “service” provides Mastercard with direct access to over 170 million potential customers, not to mention all their personal and biometric data.

The company also recently won a government contract to design the Huduma Card, which will be used for paying State services. For Mastercard these partnerships with government are essential for achieving its lofty vision of creating a “world beyond cash.”

A New Frontier

In India an even more ambitious project is under way: the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which aims to create a centralized voter enrolment system for 1.2 billion people. It will be the largest identity platform and biometric database in the world. There’s only one snag: according to its creators, the only way to make the system work effectively will be through the widespread adoption of electronic payment systems, side by side, as always, with biometric recognition systems.

Given that cash is still king on the subcontinent, the government may have its work cut out. Finance minister Arun Jaitley has repeatedly underscored the need to transform India into a cashless economy, supposedly to “rein in the problem of black money.” However, with its huge informal economy, India remains the largest producer and consumer of currency notes after China (as well as the biggest consumer of gold).

Here’s more from India’s Financial Express:

Currently less than 5% of all payments are done electronically. Results from the ICE 360 Cash Survey 2014 show that cash is the preferred mode of payment even in Delhi, the most affluent and developed metropolis. Nearly 73% of all purchases by Delhi consumers are paid for in cash and only 17% by card.

Naturally the Indian government will do all it can to change this situation. In an article in the Daily Mail Nandan Nilekani, one of the technocrats behind UIDAI, urges the government to lead the way. “The government must be the initial driver, using the heft and reach of its social security schemes to drive the adoption of an electronic payments model,” Nilekani asserts. “As momentum grows, private players can step in.”

Those private players will no doubt include banks. After all, in a world where every transaction – or at least every “official” transaction – must be electronic, the power of banks over individuals is likely to dramatically increase, as Brett Scott warns in an article for The Guardian:

With this comes the specter of bank surveillance, where every transaction you ever partake in is authorized and recorded by a privately run commercial bank, giving it a transaction-by-transaction history of your entire commercial life. If such a bank does not like an enterprise – such as Wikileaks – it can just freeze it out.

The New Cost of Doing Business

An oft-overlooked benefit of cash transactions is that there is no intermediary. One party pays the other party in mutually accepted currency and not a single middleman gets to wet his beak.

In a cashless society there will be nothing stopping banks or other financial mediators from taking a small piece of every single transaction. They would also be able to use – and potentially abuse – the massive deposits of data they collect on their customers’ payment behavior. This information is of huge interest and value to retail marketing departments, other financial institutions, insurance companies, governments, secret services, and a host of other organizations.

Another very important perk of cash is that it significantly limits central banks’ ability to continue conducting arguably the greatest financial heist of the modern age, i.e., negative interest rate policy (NIRP). The only way that central banks can maintain negative interest rates ad infinitum is by abolishing cash altogether, as the Bank of England chief economist Andrew Hadlaine all but admitted. As long as cash exists, there’s no way of preventing depositors from doing the logical thing – i.e. taking their money out of the bank and parking it where the erosive effects of NIRP can’t reach it.

So in order to save a financial system that is morally beyond the pale and stopped serving the basic needs of the real economy a long time ago, governments and central banks must do away with the last remaining thing that gives people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom in their increasingly controlled and surveyed lives.

The biggest tragedy of all is that the governments and banks’ strongest ally in their War on Cash is the general public itself. As long as people continue to abandon the use of cash, for the sake of a few minor gains in convenience, the war on cash is already won.

A war conducted by bankers, politicians, academics, even startup guys.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-08/war-cash-advancing-all-fronts-first-they-came-pennies

The Cashless Society Cometh: European Nations Such As Sweden And Denmark Are ‘Eradicating Cash’

Did you know that 95 percent of all retail sales in Sweden are cashless?  And did you know that the government of Denmark has a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030?  All over the world, we are seeing a relentless march toward a cashless society, and nowhere is this more true than in northern Europe.  In Sweden, hundreds of bank branches no longer accept or dispense cash, and thousands of ATM machines have been permanently removed.  At this point, bills and coins only account for just 2 percent of the Swedish economy, and many stores no longer take cash at all.  The notion of a truly “cashless society” was once considered to be science fiction, but now we are being told that it is “inevitable”, and authorities insist that it will enable them to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders.  But what will we give up in the process?

In Sweden, the transition to a cashless society is being enthusiastically embraced.  The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article that was published on Saturday…

    Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote “Money, Money, Money,” considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

    Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

To me, giving money in church electronically seems so bizarre.  But it is starting to happen here in the United States, and in Sweden some churches collect most of their tithes and offerings this way…

    During a recent Sunday service, the church’s bank account number was projected onto a large screen. Worshipers pulled out cellphones and tithed through an app called Swish, a payment system set up by Sweden’s biggest banks that is fast becoming a rival to cards.

    Other congregants lined up at a special “Kollektomat” card machine, where they could transfer funds to various church operations. Last year, out of 20 million kronor in tithes collected, more than 85 percent came in by card or digital payment.

And of course it isn’t just Sweden that is rapidly transitioning to a cashless society.  Over in Denmark, government officials have a goal “to completely do away with paper money” by the year 2030…

    Sweden is not the only country interested in eradicating cash. Its neighbor, Denmark, is also making great strides to lessen the circulation of banknotes in the country.

    Two decades ago, roughly 80 percent of Danish citizens relied on hard cash while shopping. Fast forward to today, that figure has dropped dramatically to 25 percent.

    “We’re interested in getting rid of cash,” said Matas IT Director Thomas Grane. “The handling, security and everything else is expensive; so, definitely we want to push digital payments, and that’s of course why we introduced mobile payments to help this process.”

    Eventually, establishments may soon have the right to reject cash- a practice that is common in Sweden. Government officials have set a 2030 deadline to completely do away with paper money.

Could you imagine a world where you couldn’t use cash for anything?

This is the direction things are going – especially in Europe.

As I have written about previously, cash transactions of more than 2,500 euros have already been banned in Spain, and France and Italy have both banned all cash transactions of more than 1,000 euros.

Little by little, cash is being eradicated, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning.  417 billion cashless transactions were conducted in 2014, and the final number for 2015 is projected to be much higher.

Banks like this change, because it enables them to make more money due to the fees that they collect from credit cards and debit cards.  And governments like this change because electronic payments enable them to watch, track and monitor what we are all doing much more easily.

These days, very rarely does anyone object to what is happening.  Instead, most of us just seem to accept that this change is “inevitable”, and we are being assured that it will be for the better.  And no matter where in the world you go, the propaganda seems to be the same.  For example, the following comes from an Australian news source…

    AND so we prepare to turn the page to fresh year — 2016, a watershed year in which Australia will accelerate towards becoming a genuine cashless society.

    The cashless society will be a new world free of $1 and $2 coins, or $5 or $10 bank notes. A new world in which all commercial transactions, from buying an i-pad or a hamburger to playing the poker machines, purchasing a newspaper, paying household bills or picking up the dry-cleaning, will be paid for electronically.

And in that same article the readers are told that Australia will likely be “a fully cashless society” by 2022…

    Research by Westpac Bank predicts Australia will be a fully cashless society by 2022 — just six years away. Already half of all commercial payments are now made electronically.

Even in some of the poorest areas on the entire globe we are seeing a move toward a cashless society.  In 2015, banks in India made major progress on this front, and income tax rebates are being considered by the government as an incentive “to encourage people to move away from cash transactions“.

Would a truly cashless society reduce crime and make all of our lives much more efficient?

Maybe.

But what would we have to give up?

To me, America is supposed to be a place where we can go where we want and do what we want without the government constantly monitoring us.  If people choose to use cashless forms of payment that is one thing, but if we are all required to go to such a system I fear that it could result in the loss of tremendous amounts of freedom and liberty.

And it is all too easy to imagine a world where a government-sponsored form of “identification” would be required to use any form of electronic payment.  This would give the government complete control over who could use “the system” and who could not.  The potential for various forms of coercion and tyranny in such a scenario is obvious.

What would you do if you could not buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper “identification” someday?  What you simply give in to whatever the government was demanding of you at the time even if it went against your fundamental beliefs?

That is certainly something to think about.

Many will cheer as the world makes a rapid transition to a cashless society, but I will not.  I believe that a truly cashless system would open the door for great evil, and I don’t want any part of it.

What about you?

Would you welcome a cashless society?

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-cashless-society-cometh-european-nations-such-as-sweden-and-denmark-are-eradicating-cash

The Beast System Arises: The Largest Bank In Norway Calls For The Elimination Of Cash

The biggest bank in Norway is calling for the complete and total elimination of cash. Many local bank branches in Norway already don’t deal in cash, but that is not good enough for DNB. They want a blanket ban on the use of cash, and they are selling this as a way to crack down on criminals and money launderers. But in the end, the truth is that they want to be able to force everyone in society to use the banks and it would enable them to collect fees on almost every transaction. It is an agenda that is being driven by greed, but it could also open the door for great tyranny. Unfortunately, we are not just seeing aggressive movement toward a cashless society in Norway. It is also happening in Sweden, in Denmark and in many other nations all around the globe. The Beast system is rising, and yet very few people out there even seem alarmed by this.

When I first learned about what was happening in Norway, I was absolutely stunned. I have ancestors that came over to America from over there, and I had no idea that this was happening. The following comes from the International Business Times…

    The largest bank in Norway has called for the country to stop using cash, the Local reported Friday. This comes as the latest move in a country that has been leading the global charge toward electronic money in recent years, with several banks already not offering cash in their branch offices and some industries seeking to cut back on paper currency.

Of course this idea is being sold as something that will be really good for Norwegian society. DNB promises that eliminating cash will help authorities crack down on criminal activity and money laundering. Here is more from the International Business Times…

    “Today, there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation and [the country’s central bank] Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use. That means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control. We believe that is due to under-the-table money and laundering,” Trond Bentestuen, a DNB executive, told Norwegian website VG, the Local reported.

    “There are so many dangers and disadvantages associated with cash, we have concluded that it should be phased out,” he added.

But in addition to catching more criminals, there are many other reasons why governments really like the idea of a cashless society. It would also mean that no financial transaction would escape taxation, and it would also enable them to watch, track and monitor everything that we do much more closely.

And banks would be absolutely thrilled with a cashless society. Every member of society would be forced to use the system, bank runs would be eliminated, and every time we swipe our cards they would collect a fee.

In addition, there would be absolutely no escaping the bank bail-ins that are coming in Europe. If there was no way to pull your money out of the system, there would be no way to avoid the kind of theft that has now been institutionalized by European authorities. I covered the brand new bail-in rules that went into effect in Europe on January 1st, 2016 in a previous article…

    If you have a bank account anywhere in Europe, you need to read this article. On January 1st, 2016, a new bail-in system will go into effect for all European banks. This new system is based on the Cyprus bank bail-ins that we witnessed a few years ago. If you will remember, money was grabbed from anyone that had more than 100,000 euros in their bank accounts in order to bail out the banks. Now the exact same principles that were used in Cyprus are going to apply to all of Europe.

Sadly, we are now witnessing a major push toward a cashless society all over the planet.

It is happening in China, in India, and all over Europe. In fact, some nations in Europe have already banned cash transactions over a certain level. Here are just a couple of examples…

    As I have written about previously, cash transactions of more than 2,500 euros have already been banned in Spain, and France and Italy have both banned all cash transactions of more than 1,000 euros.

    Little by little, cash is being eradicated, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning. 417 billion cashless transactions were conducted in 2014, and the final number for 2015 is projected to be much higher.

Of course the epicenter for the transition to a cashless society continues to be northern Europe.

Denmark intends to entirely eradicate cash by the year 2030, and the transition to a cashless society in Sweden is now almost complete…

    Did you know that 95 percent of all retail sales in Sweden are cashless? And did you know that the government of Denmark has a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030? All over the world, we are seeing a relentless march toward a cashless society, and nowhere is this more true than in northern Europe. In Sweden, hundreds of bank branches no longer accept or dispense cash, and thousands of ATM machines have been permanently removed. At this point, bills and coins only account for just 2 percent of the Swedish economy, and many stores no longer take cash at all. The notion of a truly “cashless society” was once considered to be science fiction, but now we are being told that it is “inevitable”, and authorities insist that it will enable them to thwart criminals, terrorists, drug runners, money launderers and tax evaders. But what will we give up in the process?

The potential for tyranny is what has me concerned more than anything.

Just imagine a world where you could not buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without participating in “the system”.

If you chose to opt out, how would you and your family survive?

And it would be way too easy for the government to set requirements for participation in the system. For example, they could make it illegal to sell to anyone without the proper government-issued form of identification, or they could require some form of loyalty oath as a pre-condition for enrollment.

The war on cash is a direct assault on the fundamental liberties and freedoms that we enjoy today. They may promise us that a cashless society will make our lives better right now, but tomorrow I am afraid that it could open the door to tyranny on a level that most of us would have never even imagined.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-beast-system-arises-the-largest-bank-in-norway-calls-for-the-elimination-of-cash

The Real Purpose Of A Cashless Society

Countries worldwide are actively working towards eliminating cash-based transactions in favor of electronic and biometric options. Does this trend merely reflect the embracing of technologically-driven advantages that allow banking and finance to be conducted more efficiently? Could there be more than meets the eye?

One might be forgiven for shrugging it all off as coincidental or inconsequential. After all, technological advances do come with benefits that governments, businesses, and individuals can capitalize on all the time. Nevertheless, indications also point to a parallel but very systematic and deliberate process towards a global cashless society - with implications for every person operating within today's monetary and financial systems.

Mike Konrad for theamericanthinker.com recently fronted the view that governments will rise to the occasion and soon will be making cash illegal. 

"It (cash) can be spent any way one pleases, with no one watching.   It can be hidden from the government to avoid taxes.  It can be used to engage in transactions of a semi-legal nature.  It has power that the government cannot control, and that is why it has to go", Konrad explained.

He further provided a sample of headlines, all less than two months old that give us a scary view as to what is coming:

- Bring On the Cashless Future - Bloomberg
- China buyers go virtually cashless - The Star
- Norway's Biggest Bank Calls For Country To Stop Using Cash - Int'l Business Times
- Cashless future underway as Canadian consumers have more credit, debit and app options than ever - CBC
- In Sweden, a Cash-Free Future Nears - NY Times
- Germany proposes new cash ban and capital controls as Europe rushes towards NIRP - Examiner.

Megan McArdle for the nationalpost.com recently made reference to the cashless society drift already taking root in Korea and Sweden. McArdle argued that for all the attendant benefits of crime reduction such as the near-elimination of tax evasion, curtailing armed robberies and the easy flow of drug trafficking proceeds, there remains one major downside: the amount of power that the cashless society gives the government over its citizens.

McArdle explains that unmonitored resources like cash create opportunities for criminals. But they also create a sort of cushion between ordinary people and a government with extraordinary powers. Removing that cushion leaves people who aren't criminals vulnerable to intrusion into every remote corner of their lives. For this reason, we also need to think seriously about limiting the ability of the government to use the payments system as an instrument to control the behaviour of its citizens.

Which country is likely to become the first cashless society? Sweden seems to be on track to beat them all to the finish line, becoming  the fastest test-case scenario of what a cash-free future may look like. In late December, Liz Alderman for the nytimes.com explained that few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

Bills and coins now represent just 2 percent of Sweden's economy, compared with 7.7 percent in the United States and 10 percent in the euro area. This year, only about 20 percent of all consumer payments in Sweden have been made in cash, compared with an average of 75 percent in the rest of the world, according to Euromonitor International.

It is also a practical matter, Alderman continues, as many of the country's banks no longer accept or dispense cash. "We don't want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out," said Bjorn Ulvaeus, a former Abba music band member who has leveraged the band's legacy into a sprawling business empire that includes the Abba Museum.

Not everyone is cheering. Alderman noted that Sweden's embrace of electronic payments has alarmed consumer organizations and critics who warn of a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes.

Last year, the number of electronic fraud cases surged to 140,000, more than double the amount a decade ago, according to Sweden's Ministry of Justice.Older adults and refugees in Sweden who use cash may be marginalized, critics say. And young people who use apps to pay for everything or take out loans via their mobile phones risk falling into debt.

"It might be trendy," said Bjorn Eriksson, a former director of the Swedish police force and former president of Interpol. "But there are all sorts of risks when a society starts to go cashless."

Swedish churches too have embraced the conveniences of the cashless payments bandwagon which is said to be cheaper and easier to process than cash. At the Filadelfia Stockholm church, so few of the 1,000 parishioners now carry cash that the church had to adapt, said Soren Eskilsson, the executive pastor.

During a recent Sunday service, the church's bank account number was projected onto a large screen. Worshipers pulled out cellphones and tithed through an app called Swish, a payment system set up by Sweden's biggest banks that is fast becoming a rival to cards.

Other congregants lined up at a special "Kollektomat" card machine, where they could transfer funds to various church operations. Last year, out of 20 million kronor in tithes collected, more than 85 percent came in by card or digital payment.

Despite the conveniences, even some who stand to gain from a cashless society see drawbacks. According to Jacob de Geer, a founder of iZettle which makes a mobile-powered card reader: "...But Big Brother can watch exactly what you're doing if you purchase things only electronically".

However, the rate of progress for the countries towards the coveted 'no cash please' status has been varied. Israel, for instance, started the process towards the conveniences of becoming a cashless society several years back. According to Yossi Aloni in a May 2014 report for Israel today, a special committee headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's chief of staff, Harel Locker, then recommended a three-phase plan to all but do away with cash transactions in Israel.

The motivation for examining a cashless economy was combating money laundering and other tax-evasion tactics, thereby maximizing potential tax collection and greatly expanding the tax base. This was considered important due to the enormous strain put on Israel's national budget by the army, healthcare system and other public services.

The committee estimated that the black market represents over 20 percent of Israel's GDP, and cash is the facilitating factor - enabling tax evasion, money laundering and even financing terrorism.

Israel consequently imposed cash limits or businesses and individuals. Any violation of these limits would be a criminal offense warranting a stiff fine. In conjunction with these new restrictions, Israeli banks would also be required to provide all account holders with debit cards further to promote electronic payments.

South Korea is another country where cashless transactions are gaining traction very fast. Yoon Ja-young for the Korea Times recently reported that cash is giving way to credit cards and fintech payments. Those who have left wallets at home find they can do perfectly well without banknotes and coins, so long as they carry credit cards with their smartphones.

The Bank of Korea is planning a "cashless society" by 2020. If a shopper buys a 9,500 won item and pays with a 10,000 won banknote, for instance, the shopper will be credited 500 won to his or her prepaid card instead of getting a 500 won coin in change.

"To accelerate the transition into a cashless society, there should be more tax benefits for non-cash transactions while increasing costs and burdens for those holding or managing cash," said Lee Hyo-chan, the head of the research center at the Credit Finance Institute.

So what will all this lead? Mike Konrad for theamericanthinker.com reads a sinister motive into these seemingly co-ordinated trends, mincing no words: "The real purpose of a cashless society will be total control: Absolute Total Control...The end result will be the loss of all autonomy.  This will be the darkest of all tyrannies.  From cradle to grave one will not only be tracked by location, but through purchases". 

He concluded: "Liberty will be non-existent. However, it will be sold to us as expedient simplicity itself, freeing us from crime: Fascism with a friendly face. Perhaps the scariest consequence of all is that an individual can be "terminated" by a bureaucrat erasing his identity.  Do not kid yourself, it will happen. Real 'Mark of the Beast' stuff".

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=238#Vggy6yIYTmFKtCJ8.99

Japan: Fingerprints to Be Tested as ‘currency’

Source: The Japan News

Starting this summer, the government will test a system in which foreign tourists will be able to verify their identities and buy things at stores using only their fingerprints.

The government hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists by using the system to prevent crime and relieve users from the necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. It aims to realize the system by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The experiment will have inbound tourists register their fingerprints and other data, such as credit card information, at airports and elsewhere.

Tourists would then be able to conduct tax exemption procedures and make purchases after verifying their identities by placing two fingers on special devices installed at stores.

Read more
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Japan%3A_Fingerprints_to_Be_Tested_as_%E2%80%98currency%E2%80%99/50341/0/38/38/Y/M.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZiqt_ukE0o

A New Digital Cash System Was Just Unveiled At A Secret Meeting For Bankers In New York

Last month, a “secret meeting” that involved more than 100 executives from some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States was held in New York City.  During this “secret meeting“, a company known as “Chain” unveiled a technology that transforms U.S. dollars into “pure digital assets”.  Reportedly, there were representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup, Visa, Fidelity, Fiserv and Pfizer in the room, and Chain also claims to be partnering with Capital One, State Street, and First Data.  This “revolutionary” technology is intended to completely change the way that we use money, and it would represent a major step toward a cashless society.  But if this new digital cash system is going to be so good for society, why was it unveiled during a secret meeting for Wall Street bankers?  Is there something more going on here than we are being told?

None of us probably would have ever heard about this secret meeting if it was not for a report in Bloomberg.  The following comes from their article entitled “Inside the Secret Meeting Where Wall Street Tested Digital Cash“…

    On a recent Monday in April, more than 100 executives from some of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered for a private meeting at the Times Square office of Nasdaq Inc. They weren’t there to just talk about blockchain, the new technology some predict will transform finance, but to build and experiment with the software.

    By the end of the day, they had seen something revolutionary: U.S. dollars transformed into pure digital assets, able to be used to execute and settle a trade instantly. That’s the promise of a blockchain, where the cumbersome and error-prone system that takes days to move money across town or around the world is replaced with almost instant certainty.

So it is not just Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog that is referring to this gathering as a “secret meeting”.  This is actually how it was described by Bloomberg.  And I think that there is a very good reason why this meeting was held in secret, because many in the general public would definitely be alarmed by this giant step toward a cashless society.  Here is more on this new system from Bloomberg…

    While cash in a bank account moves electronically all the time today, there’s a distinction between that system and what it means to say money is digital. Electronic payments are really just messages that cash needs to move from one account to another, and this reconciliation is what adds time to the payments process. For customers, moving money between accounts can take days as banks wait for confirmations. Digital dollars, however, are pre-loaded into a system like a blockchain. From there, they can be swapped immediately for an asset.

    “Instead of a record or message being moved, it’s the actual asset,” Ludwin said. “The payment and the settlement become the same thing.”

Why this is so alarming is because we are seeing other major moves toward a cashless system all over the planet.  In Sweden, 95 percent of all retail transactions are already cashless, and ATM machines are being removed by the hundreds.  In Denmark, government officials actually have a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030.  And in Norway, the biggest bank in the country has publicly called for the complete elimination of all cash.

Other nations in Europe have already banned cash transactions over a certain amount. Here are just a couple of examples…

    As I have written about previously, cash transactions of more than 2,500 euros have already been banned in Spain, and France and Italy have both banned all cash transactions of more than 1,000 euros.

    Little by little, cash is being eradicated, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning. 417 billion cashless transactions were conducted in 2014, and the final number for 2015 is projected to be much higher.

The global push toward a cashless society is only going to intensify, because banks and governments both tend to really like the idea of such a system.

Banks really like the concept of a cashless society because it would force everyone to be their customers.  There would be no more hiding cash in a mattress at home or trying to pay all of your bills with paper money.  Under a cashless system, we would all be dependent on the banks, and they would make lots of money whenever we swiped our cards or our “chips” were scanned.

Governments see a lot of advantages in a cashless society as well.  They tell us that they would be able to crack down on drug dealers, tax evaders, terrorists and money launderers, but the truth is that it would enable them to watch, track, monitor and control virtually all of our financial transactions.  Our lives would become open books to the government, and financial privacy would be a thing of the past.

In addition, the potential for tyranny would be absolutely off the charts.

Just imagine a world where the government could serve as the gatekeeper for who is allowed to use the cashless system and who is not.  They could require that we all submit to some sort of government-issued form of identification before being permitted to operate within the system, or it is even conceivable that a loyalty oath would be required.

Of course if you did not submit to their demands, you could not buy, sell, open a bank account or get a job without access to the cashless system.

Hopefully people can understand where this is going.  Paper money is a very important component of our freedom, and if it is taken away from us that will open the door for all sorts of abuse.

Even now, cash is slowly being “criminalized” in America.  For example, if cash is used to pay for a hotel room that is considered by federal authorities to be “suspicious activity” that should be reported to the government.  Of course it isn’t against the law to pay your hotel bill in cash just yet, but according to the government it is something that “terrorists” do so it needs to be closely watched.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see where all of this is going.  And for those of us that understand what time it is, this is a clear indication that it is getting late in the game.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/a-new-digital-cash-system-was-just-unveiled-at-a-secret-meeting-for-bankers-in-new-york

Cashless Britain Advances as Credit and Debit Cards Thrive

Britain has passed another milestone on the path to a cashless society, with 2015 the first year that cash was used for less than half of all payments by consumers.

Cash usage will be eclipsed by debit cards and contactless payments by 2021, according to Payments UK, which represents the major banks, building societies and payment providers.

In 2015 cash made up 45.1% of payments, compared with 64% in 2005, and is expected to fall to just a quarter by 2025. It will largely be replaced with payments by contactless cards, which have soared in popularity.

Contactless payments grew threefold in 2015, with more than a billion “wave and pay” transactions over the year. Since the start of 2016 contactless use has gathered pace, particularly on the London Underground network. On the high street, one in six card purchases are now contactless, with Tesco leading the way.

But Payments UK’s annual review of how households pay for goods and services reveals that the death of the cheque has been much exaggerated. It said that 546m cheques were written in 2015, despite the fact most retailers now refuse to accept them.

The Payments Council, the predecessor to Payments UK, provoked a storm of protest in 2009 when it proposed a complete withdrawal of cheques by 2018. Following a consumer revolt the plans were abandoned, and today the body says cheques remain a “convenient and secure method” for making payments.

Its annual report charts the changing nature of how British households choose to spend their money. The average adult makes a total of 648 payments a year, including cash, equal to 54 a month. Debit cards were used for 20 payments a month, with computers processing 19,276 debit card payments every minute in the UK in 2015.

On average, individuals make six direct debit payments a month and use their credit cards four times, but standing orders are less popular at just 0.7 a month.

The amount of money now transferred through the direct debit system is vast. In 2015 debits to pay mortgages, rents, energy and other bills were worth £1.22tn.

Debit card use is up 10% in 2015 compared with 2014, while credit card usage was up 9%. In total, 38.2bn payments of all forms were made across the UK in 2015, including 1.5bn that were made between businesses.
Contactless payments mean card fraud now happens after cancellation
Read more

Adrian Buckle, chief economist at Payments UK, said: “This year’s UK Payment Markets report reveals a picture of consumers and businesses more ready than ever to reassess how they make payments and make the most of the convenient, cost-effective and innovative options that are available.”

Barclaycard said the biggest increase in contactless payments has been among Britain’s over-60s, with the number of users up 116% over the past year – more than any other age group.

But not everyone wants to join the contactless revolution. A survey last week by the security company Defender Note found that 30% of consumers want banks to ask them before issuing them with contactless cards. It suggested that customers with contactless cards are twice as likely to report being victims of financial fraud.

However, banks say contactless fraud is very low. Figures from the UK Cards Association show that in the first six months of 2015 there were £516,500 of fraudulent transactions on contactless cards – the equivalent of 2p for every £100 spent using the technology.

This year payment by mobile phone is expected to increase dramatically. Android Pay went live across most of Britain’s banks and building societies last week, and is already accepted at 460,000 retail payment points.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/may/23/cashless-britain-advances-contactless-debit-cards-thrive

The Coming Cashless Society:
Big Brother and the Mark of the Beast

By Paul McGuire

Sweden is the first nation in the world to embrace a cashless society, where according to the central bank, Riksbank, cash transactions made up only 2% of the value of all payments last year. Swedish economists believe that by 2020 cash transactions will be only 0.5%.

Various apps like Swish and the Danish app, MobilePay, are being used to make purchases from various street vendor sales and even to give church donations. According a Guardian article, “Sweden leads race to become cashless society,” by Jon Henley dated June 4, 2016, “Swedes are blazing the trail in Europe, with banks, buses, street vendors and even churches expecting plastic or virtual payment.”

Promoters of a cashless society point out that there are countless benefits, such as control, tracking, and identification of criminals, along with the ability to block deposits, purchases, and withdrawals. In 2014, Cass Sunstein, the “regulatory czar,” former head of the office of Information and Regulatory Affair (OIRA), promoted the idea that a cashless society would reduce street crime.

Sunstein believed that there was a relationship between (EBT) Electronic Benefit Transfer system for welfare benefits and a drop in crime. Although there has been no proof that Sunstein’s theory is true, in the spring of 2014, the Department of Justice came under fire for “Operation Choke Point,” which was designed to shut down payday lenders and other merchant activities that were labeled ‘high-risk.”

Sunstein appears to believe that society should be run by something resembling Plato’s Philosopher King System, controlled by “elites” such as himself. In effect, our world already is ruled by a class of wealthy and powerful people who view themselves as the philosopher or god-kings described by the Greek Philosopher, Plato, who had studied the legendary super-civilization of Atlantis.

Although Sunstein would not call himself a Marxist, his ideological beliefs are totalitarian in nature, such as the belief that people should be prevented from being exposed to different belief systems on the Internet. So it is no wonder that Cass Sunstein wrote an op-ed advocating a cashless society.

WATCH: https://youtu.be/OwEUkv1oiQQ

According to an article written in the Atlantic magazine on April 8, 2016, “How a Cashless Society Could Embolden Big Brother,” by Sarah Jeong, a bare list of bullet points put out by the FDIC include some of the following merchant categories associated with high-risk activity:

Ammunition sales, Dating Services, Get Rich Products, Government Grants, Life-Time Memberships, Pharmaceutical Sales, Pornography, Pyramid-Type Sales, Surveillance Equipment, Travel Clubs, etc.

One major bank shut down the personal accounts of hundreds of “adult entertainers,” which caused them to lose access to medical treatment, food and rent money.

Sarah Jeong wrote, “A cashless society promises a world of limitation, control, and surveillance, which the poorest American already have in abundance.” According to Jeong, EBT and the cashless society targets the most vulnerable people in our society.

Interestingly, one of the most widely read books in human history, the book of Revelation, deals specifically with a global cashless society where no individual can buy or sell without receiving what is called “the mark of the beast,” which appears to predict some kind of microchip implant with a computer-brain interface. This “mark of the beast” technology will only be distributed to individuals who have the required religious and political beliefs, making it an all-powerful global control system.

Despite the intellectual bias against the book of Revelation even being looked at, the reality is that it brings up the themes of a cashless society and some kind of microchip over 2,000 years ago. The other thing that is interesting is that in order to receive this chip and participate in the economic system and be able to buy or sell, you must have specific beliefs. The specific condition is that you must choose to worship the charismatic world leader the Bible calls the Antichrist.

No matter what your religious beliefs are, you will have to renounce them and declare your worship of the Antichrist as God. This appears to specifically target Christians, in that they must renounce their belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and openly state that they will worship the Antichrist.

Over a century ago readers of this passage from Revelation chapter 13 had a difficult time understanding exactly what the mark of the beast would be and how it would work. But now, in a world where nano-chip implants and computer-brain interfaces are evolving every day, it is easy to see how such a system could be put into place.

Already, a host of secular writers are warning of the Orwellian control that is coming through a cashless society. Could it be we are near the point where our political or religious belief system will determine whether or not we will be allowed to participate in the economic system? It is not too difficult to believe that in just a few short years microchip implants could be distributed on the basis of our political belief systems.

The microscopic chips are already being manufactured. The technology is already in place; all it would take is a legal order, either national or global. In order for that to happen, all it would take is some kind of national disaster, terrorist attack, or economic collapse. I explore the realities of how soon this could be coming in my book, A Prophecy of the Future of America 2016 - 2017.

http://www.newswithviews.com/McGuire/paul283.htm

Cash chaos in India: An unprecedented ban on large bills backfires on the poor

The rickshaw meter read about $2.30, but passenger Gaurav Munjal didn’t have cash. The first ATM he and the driver found had a long line; the second was out of bills.

Frustrated, the 26-year-old tech entrepreneur asked the driver, “Do you want some rice?”

The two men drove to a department store and Munjal used a credit card to pay for an 11-pound sack of basmati rice that he deposited on the floor of the rickshaw, next to the driver’s feet.

“Good thing for the barter system,” Munjal said later in an interview. “Otherwise it was chaos.”

An exasperating cash crunch has gripped India in the week since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the unprecedented step of withdrawing the country’s large currency notes from circulation. Modi surprised the nation by announcing an instant ban on the 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes, worth about $7.50 and $15, respectively, and which account for 86% of the cash in the market.

The ban was billed as a sweeping move against corruption that would force Indians who hold large amounts of undeclared wealth to deposit the money at banks and make their assets official.

But it has stunned hundreds of millions of poor and working-class Indians who live an almost entirely cash-based existence, paying in bills for everything from rent to groceries to cellphone credit.

The plan was shrouded in such secrecy that even India’s financial institutions were ill prepared, creating long, sometimes unruly lines outside banks, ATMs and chronically understaffed post offices that are authorized to exchange the now-worthless notes and dispense new ones.

Indian media report that at least five people have died of exhaustion while waiting to change money outside banks, and that three children have succumbed to illnesses that private hospitals wouldn’t treat because their families had only old notes.

Credit and debit cards are unaffected, but only half of Indians have bank accounts. Even for those fortunate enough to find some cash — the government has set a temporary $66 daily limit for withdrawals — a newly released 2,000-rupee banknote is in effect useless for daily purchases because most merchants can’t make change.

Adding to the headaches is that the 2,000-rupee note and a new, revamped 500-rupee note are of a different size, meaning it could take weeks to reconfigure the country’s 200,000-plus cash machines to dispense them.

For now, that has made the 100-rupee note the basic legal tender for most transactions, reducing the world’s seventh-largest economy to trading largely in the equivalent of $1 bills.

The Wire, an online news site, called it “undeniably the most extraordinary situation India’s economy has faced since independence.”

At his roadside stall in central Mumbai, India’s financial capital, Ramesh Sisodia doled out steaming shot glasses of milky tea and coffee, the cheap and ubiquitous fuel for armies of Indian laborers and office workers, at 20 rupees a pop (about 30 cents). But Sisodia said some customers were trying to pay with 2,000-rupee bills.

“It is not their fault, but how am I going to cope?” Sisodia said.

His business had dwindled as his poorer customers chose to save their scarce small bills and richer ones opted for fancier coffee shops that take plastic.

“People don’t have money to buy bread — why would they stroll out for a coffee?” he said. “Those who can afford it would prefer to pay 10 times more for a coffee at Barista” — a Starbucks-like chain — “because they can pay by card.”

As one customer took out his wallet to pay, a 10-rupee note (15 cents) fell on the ground. A bystander alerted Sisodia, who thanked him and said, “It is a precious note these days.”

When the customer produced exact change, Sisodia said, “God bless you, my friend.”

Blue-collar workers are not showing up for jobs, unable to scrounge up money for bus fare or fuel to power their motorbikes. Mumbai’s cash-based taxis and rickshaws have also struggled as middle-class customers opt for card-based services such as Uber.

Even filling up the tank has become a chore as gas stations, which have been authorized to accept the old bills for a limited time, refuse to make change, said Lallan Jaiswal, a cabby sitting idle by the roadside, his khaki uniform slung over the driver’s seat.

“They fill up the tank only if we buy gas worth 500 or 1,000 rupees,” Jaiswal said — the equivalent of a day’s worth of fares.

Neighborhood grocers who deal mainly in cash have offered to sell goods on credit, while some customers are bartering phone credit — bought with a credit card — for vegetables.

Such solutions fit into India’s longstanding tradition of jugaad, or ad hoc fixes. “But the middle class always suffers the worst,” said Kiran Gosrani, owner of a grocery in central Mumbai. “The big fish always get away.”

Indeed, many Indians are skeptical that the drastic action will end the scourge of so-called black money — the vast amounts of off-the-books wealth that accrue at the rate of an estimated $460 billion a year, more than the economy of Thailand.

Black money is an outgrowth of an economy in which cash accounts for two-thirds of the value of all transactions, one of the highest rates in the world, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. (In the U.S., it’s 14%.)

Much of the wealth that India has accumulated since economic reforms began in the 1990s has never been taxed or accounted for, parked instead in real estate, gold, foreign investments and, in some cases, bundles of cash sitting at home.

It is those stacks of bills that Modi, who took office 2½ years ago on promises to curb corruption, aimed to bring into the open. Supporters of the prime minister’s plan said those holding cash stockpiles would have to deposit them at banks, where huge amounts would draw the scrutiny of tax authorities, or allow their value to evaporate.

In a speech over the weekend, Modi asked Indians for patience until Dec. 30, the deadline for depositing the old bills, saying, “I promise you I will give you the India of your dreams.”

The chaos in the streets has overshadowed Modi’s rhetoric. But critics say that even if the policy had been smoothly implemented, black money would continue to flow from virtually every seam of a lightly regulated economy that presents endless opportunities for masking wealth.

In the short term, jugaad is not limited to the working class; the wealthy, too, are finding ways around the currency ban.

Officials have said that bank deposits of less than about $3,600 can be made with virtually no questions asked, to attract small-time savers. One employee in Mumbai’s diamond bourse, who requested anonymity to protect his job, said jewelry merchants were distributing bundles of cash to their employees and having them deposit it under their names, to be retrieved later.

“Employees willingly help out their bosses because they pay their salaries,” the person said. “At some places, even bank managers are helping them out because banks need rich customers.”

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-india-currency-20161115-story.html

War On Cash Intensifies: Citibank To Stop Accepting Cash At Some Branches

Less than a week after India’s surprise move to scrap its highest denomination cash notes, another front in the War on Cash has intensified down under in Australia.

Yesterday, banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”

(How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s good for banks!)

This isn’t the first time that the financial establishment has pushed for a cashless society in Australia (or anywhere else).

In September 2015, Australian bank Westpac published its “Cash Free Report”, suggesting that the country would become cashless by 2022.

In July 2016, Australian payments firm Tyro published an enormously self-serving blog post touting the benefits of a cashless society and saying, “it’s only a matter of time.”

Most notably, two days ago, Citibank (yes, THAT Citibank) announced that it was going cashless at some of its Australian branches.

The media and political establishments have chimed in as well.

In February of this year, the Sydney Morning Herald released a series of articles, some of which were written by officials from Australia’s Department of the Treasury, suggesting that eliminating cash will “save billions”, and that “moving to a cashless society is the next step for the Australian dollar”.

This is how it works.

The government, media, banks, and even academia have formed a single, unified chorus to push this idea out to consumers that “cashless” is good for everyone.

And it’s happening across the planet, from Australia to India to Europe to North America.

They’re partially right.

Going cashless probably will save a lot of money; paper currency is costly to transport in large quantities due to the need for security.

It’s also accurate to suggest that going cashless will be “good for the banks.”

As UBS pointed out yesterday, “de-monetizing” Australia’s $50 and $100 bills would force anyone holding those notes to deposit them back in the banking system.

Bank deposits would rise as a result, and consequently, so would bank profits.

Governments would benefit from a cashless society because all savings would be in the banking system, and they have full regulatory control over the banks.

This means that your politicians would have more control over your savings and fewer obstacles to impose capital controls or engage in Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Even policy wonk academics would have a rare opportunity to take their lousy theories and PhD dissertations for a test drive.

Everyone benefits from a cashless society… except for you.

For individuals, cash still has plenty of important advantages.

Cash is one of the few remaining options for financial privacy that doesn’t create a permanent record of every purchase or transaction you make.

It’s also an easy way to reduce your exposure to risks in the broader financial system.

Think about it– the banking system is full of institutions that never miss an opportunity to demonstrate they cannot be trusted with our money.

Hardly a month goes by without some major banking scandal; they’re caught colluding on exchange rates, manipulating interest rates, fraudulently establishing fake accounts without customer consent (and then charging us fees on top of that).

It’s disgraceful.

In addition, bank safety is far from certain.

In many banking systems across the world (especially in Europe right now), banks have precariously low levels of capital and are already suffering the effects of negative interest rates.

Even in the United States, banks routinely employ very clever accounting tricks to conceal their true financial condition.

There’s also the fact that, the moment you make a deposit at a bank, it’s no longer your money. It becomes the bank’s money.

And they can do with it as they please, whether it’s freezing you out of your account or making idiotic investments with minimal reserve requirements.

You have no say in the matter.

As a bank depositor, you’re nothing more than an unsecured creditor of a financial institution which may or may not allow you to withdraw your own savings.

If you don’t believe me, take a trip down to your bank and ask to withdraw $25,000. See how quickly they treat you like a criminal terrorist.

Bottom line, conventional banking is not risk-free. And holding cash is one way to reduce that risk.

Cash essentially eliminates the middleman between you and your savings… at least, the portion of your savings that can be easily exchanged for goods and services in the economy.

Cash is a pitiful store of value over the long-term. Precious metals and other real assets are much better alternatives.

But we still can’t walk into Starbucks and pay for a cup of coffee with a quarter-ounce silver coin.

So until that day comes, cash remains an asset that you’ll want to hold.

Just make sure you don’t go overboard. The War on Cash is very real. So if you have more than a couple of months worth of living expenses, you’re taking on unnecessary risk.

Also, keep the denominations low.

As the case with India shows (see the photo), governments have no compunction about violating the public trust with immediate effect and without warning.

So if you’re in the US, don’t keep a mountain of $100 bills in your safe. Keep 10s, 20s, and 50s.

If you’re in Europe, definitely avoid the 500 and 200 euro notes, opt for 20s and 50s

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-16/war-cash-intensifies-citibank-stop-accepting-cash-some-branches

Citibank is the first Australian bank to stop taking cash

Up is down and down is up. We are now living in a bizarre era when a bank will refuse to take cash.

Citibank Australia has become the first Australian bank to go completely cashless, notifying customers that its branches will no longer handle notes and coins from November 24.

“We have seen a steady decline in the demand for cash services in our branches — in fact less than 4% of Citi customers have used this service in the last 12 months,” said Citibank head of retail bank Janine Copelin.

“This move to cashless branches reflects Citi’s commitment to digital banking and we are investing in the channels our customers prefer to use.”

Copelin said that the move is not a precursor to branch closures.

“While the number of customers visiting our branches to access cash handling services has fallen, the branch network remains an important component of how we serve our high-net worth customers,” she said.

The Nordic countries lead the way in the move to a cashless society. The Guardian reported in June that 900 of 1600 Sweden’s bank branches do not accept cash. In Iceland, curbside hotdog carts accept credit cards.

In an email to customers, Citibank stated that “cheque requests and other teller services” will continue at Citibank branches. Customers are now directed to ATMs and Australia Post branches (with Bank@Post and PostBillPay capabilities) for cash transactions.

Deposit and mortgage account clients can also use National Australia Bank branches for cash services. Citibank’s agreement with Westpac to provide customers with fee-free usage of Westpac Group ATMs also remains in place.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/citibank-is-the-first-australian-bank-to-stop-taking-cash-2016-11

Its not all about the money: 10 countries that have almost gone cashless

Since PM Modi's demonetisation drive hit us last week, we have been nudged into taking up the cashless lifestyle. From filling up Ola money and PayTM accounts, to paying rents via internet banking, we are going the extra mile digitally to compensate for the lack of cash in our pockets.

But here's the thing. There are a few countries out there where going cashless is the way of life. So much so, in some of these countries, policies have been made that encouraged the public to opt for cashless transactions.

Here's a list of such countries which could inspire you to deal with your cashless crisis:

SWEDEN

Sweden is one country where cash transactions have decreased to just three per cent in the national economy. Be it riding the public bus or donating money at the church, you will have to use your card or online banking.

This actually put a dent on bank robberies in the country, which dropped from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011 as most Swedish banks didn't have cash anymore.

NORWAY

Norway is said to be already leading the global race of going completely pro-electronic banking. Here, you can buy even street food and newspapers via mobile banking.

DNB, the largest bank in Norway, called for the public to stop using cash earlier this year. The bank proposed that the elimination of cash usage would put a dent on black money and crimes like money laundering

In Norway, several banks don't even give out cash to customers.


DENMARK

Almost one-third of the population in Denmark use cellphone app MobilePay to do their monetary transactions. In fact, businesses such as clothing retailers, restaurants and petrol pumps are actually legally free to refuse cash payments from customers. This, however, doesn't apply to services like hospitals, post offices, etc.

Reports have it that the Danish government has "set a 2030 deadline to completely do away with paper money."


BELGIUM

An average of 93 per cent of the population opt for cashless transactions in Belgium, with 86 per cent owning a debit card. Moreover, the Belgian government has imposed a limit of 3000 euros on cash payments in the country, hence coaxing people to opt for digital transaction.

Here, mobile app Sixdots is used widely for transactions, which is supported by Belgian banks.


FRANCE

The French haven't stopped at mobile payments, they even use contact-less cards and m-POS to carry out their daily transactions.

Following Belgium, France has an average of 92 per cent of population going cashless with transactions.


UNITED KINGDOM

Cash is a sole mode of payment in only a handful of places in UK. An average of 89 per cent of the population uses digital banking for transportation and other transactions here.

Paym, UK's most popular mobile payment system, has crossed 26 million pounds in transaction volume, as two-thirds of the population opt for mobile payments here.


SOMALILAND

Despite being one of Africa's poorest countries, more people in Somaliland opt for electronic banking than in most developed countries in the world. Liquid cash is rapidly decreasing in the market here, as even street vendors accept mobile payments.

So much so that even the cards are becoming a rudimentary mode of payment. A 2012 survey showed an average customer makes some 34 online transactions per month, which is higher than almost anywhere in the world.


KENYA

In Kenya, some 15 million users are subscribed to M-Pesa, a cellphone-based money transfer app. All from sending money to rural areas, paying bills, to school fees is done through M-Pesa. People even receive their salaries via this app.

The usage of cash is becoming more and more obsolete in Kenya.


CANADA

In Canada, 90 per cent of the population opt for cashless transactions, while an average of 70 per cent of payments is conducted by cards.

Report has it that new currency has been printed in Canada since January 1, 2013. And this step was taken mostly because of the lack of demand of new money in the market.

A survey held by PayPal Canada showed that 56 per cent of the public here preferred online wallet to carrying cash.


SOUTH KOREA

South Korea is one of the few Asian countries that is slipping towards a cashless economy. The government even practices a preferential VAT treatment for consumers who pay with cards, as compared to those using cash.


AND THEN, THERE ARE COUNTRIES WHICH ARE GOING THE OPPOSITE WAY

Germany is one such place where the usage of cash is still very popular. Places like cafes and small restaurants actually refuse to accept cards.

"The idea of abolishing cash is an abomination," wrote a 52-year-old activist against the proposal of a cashless society in Germany, after a member of the German government's council of advisers suggested it last year.

A USA report says Germany "is a nation that prides itself on thriftiness, paying its bills, avoiding debts and even shunning credit cards."

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/cashless-countries-belgium-denmark-uk-france-kenya-black-money/1/812384.html

India's Prime Minister Plans for Cashless Society

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, has an economic firestorm on his hands following his decision to ban the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. In his monthly address on Sunday, Modi took his ambitions further with a call for a cashless society.

According to a translation by Reuters, Modi said, “I want to tell my small merchant brothers and sisters, this is the chance for you to enter the digital world.”

The ban has removed 80 percent of the country’s currency from circulation and brought commerce to a virtual standstill. But rather than backing up, it appears that Modi is doubling down. “We can gradually move from a less-cash society to a cashless society,” he told listeners.

The initial decision to ban the two notes is part of an effort to cripple a robust black market economy. Modi said that counterfeiting was rampant and claimed that the ban would aid in the fight against tax-avoidance, bribery and the funding of terrorism.

He admitted that “a 100 percent cashless society is not possible,” right now, but emphasized that he wants to set the wheels in motion.

Credit Suisse estimates that 90 percent of transactions in India are conducted in cash. Not only would a move towards a cashless society be a tough logistical hurdle but a cultural one as well. There isn’t really a strong install base for digital payment methods in India and people aren’t familiar with how to use them. Modi urged younger people who understand technology to teach the less-savvy.

While it seems likely that a move towards a cashless society would be an extremely long-term project, Modi has demonstrated his willingness to make bold decisions with immediately negative consequences. Even if dramatic measures are taken, digital payments bring a host of problems of their own—security breaches, privacy concerns and virtual black markets to name a few.

http://gizmodo.com/indias-prime-minister-plans-for-cashless-society-1789403344

India Takes Drastic Move Toward Cashless Society

In 2012, India launched a nationwide program involving the allocation of a Unique Identification Number (UID) to every single one of its 1.2 billion residents.

Each of the numbers will be tied to the biometric data of the recipient using three different forms of information - fingerprints, iris scans, and pictures of the face. All ten digits of the hand will be recorded, and both eyes will be scanned.

The project will be directed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) under the premise of preventing identity theft and social welfare fraud.

India has rather extensive social welfare and safety net programs, ranging from medical support and heating assistance to others aimed at helping the poor.

Fraud is a rampant problem in India, especially in relation to these programs due to a preponderance of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who often stuff welfare rolls with fake names and take the money for themselves.

Yet, although the justification for the billion person database is the increased ability to accurately disperse social welfare benefits, it will not be just the Indian government's social welfare programs that have access to and utilize the UIDAI.

Indeed, even before the program has been completed, major banks, state/local governments, and other institutions are planning to use the UIDAI for identification verification purposes and, of course, payment and accessibility.

As Aaron Saenz of the Singularity Hub writes:

Yet the UID is going to be used for much more than social welfare programs. The UIDAI is in discussion with many institutions (banks, local/state governments, etc.) to allow them to use the UID as a means of identity verification.

These institutions will pay the UIDAI some fee to cover costs and generate revenue. There seems to be little doubt that once it is established, the UID will become a preferred method (if not the preferred method) of identification in India.

Saenz also sees the eventuality of the UIDAI program becoming a means of payment and accessibility. He continues:

Ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised if the UID, with its biometric data, could be used as a means of payment (when linked to a bank account), or as an access key to homes and cars.

Purchase a meal with your fingerprint and unlock your door with the twinkle in your eye. Similar results could be expected in other nations that adopted biometric identification systems.

Saenz, and other proponents of the UID (UIDAI), have been diligent in pointing out that the program "is just a number, not an ID card." However, this claim is debatable.

Saenz himself admits that State issued driver's licenses and identification cards will reference the UID information.

Recently, however, India has made even greater strides toward a cashless society, this time openly saying as much.

Having made a decision to ban 500 and 1,000 pound Rupee notes, Prime Minister Modi is openly stating his goal of moving India towards becoming a "cashless society."

This is despite the economic result of his decision, i.e. bringing commerce to a virtual standstill as a result of removing nearly eighty percent of India's currency from circulation.

While Modi has received much criticism for his decision, he is refusing to back down, stating in a public speech that "We can gradually move from a less-cash society to a cashless society."

According to a translation by Reuters, Modi also stated, "I want to tell my small merchant brothers and sisters, this is the chance for you to enter the digital world."

Modi admitted that, right now, a "100 percent cashless society" is not possible but that he wanted to set the wheels in motion to get there eventually.

"It's correct that a 100 percent cashless society is not possible. But why don't we make a beginning for a less-cash society in India?" Modi said. "We can gradually move from a less-cash society to a cashless society."

While citing the "black market" as one justification for the elimination of hard physical currency, the truth is that power and control are the real reasons national governments have for pursuing a cashless society.

When all financial transactions eventually become digital, it is only a matter of time before banks, corporations, and governments begin to force citizens to bend to their will with the threat of cutting off accounts as punishment for resistance or refusal.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=837#VmHqsiFQZWsLKoLG.99

Amazon Go lets you trade your privacy for a cashier-less lunch buying experience
Aimed at those who value sandwiches over security

ONLINE RETAIL GIANT Amazon has launched a shop that will make you feel like a shoplifter but will actually be tracking your every move.

Amazon Go arrives in the form of an 1800-square-foot retail space located in the company's hometown of Seattle and is described by the firm as a "new kind of store" without checkouts.

Instead of making small talk with cashiers or battling a self-service checkout that refuses to recognise your shopping in the bagging area, Amazon Go lets you waltz in, pick up a sandwich, and walk straight out.

Naturally, that doesn't mean you're getting a free BLT on Amazon. Not only will you be charged once you've left the shop courtesy of the Amazon Go app that you'll need to install on your smartphone, you'll also have sacrificed your privacy for a speedy sandwich shopping experience.

"Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning," Amazon explains.

"Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When you’re done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we’ll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt."

If you're fine with Amazon tracking you in real life as it does online, it will have plenty to offer on its shelves, which presumably will be stocked by robots.

"We offer delicious ready-to-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack options made fresh every day by our on-site chefs and favourite local kitchens and bakeries. Our selection of grocery essentials ranges from staples like bread and milk to artisan cheeses and locally made chocolates," the firm said.

"You’ll find well-known brands we love, plus special finds we’re excited to introduce to customers. For a quick home-cooked dinner, pick up one of our chef-designed Amazon Meal Kits, with all the ingredients you need to make a meal for two in about 30 minutes."

Yeah. Take that, Waitrose.

A public opening of Amazon Go is scheduled for 2017, although it's unlikely that it'll be coming to the UK anytime soon.

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2479078/amazon-go-lets-you-trade-your-privacy-a-cashier-less-lunch-buying-experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc

This is nothing new. I first learned of this way back in the early 2000's from Billy Crone in his rfid series. I recommend watching that and you can see how the stuff he talked about back then is now coming to fruition.

http://www.getalifemedia.com/video/prophecy/rfid.shtml

Cash Is No Longer King: The Phasing Out of Physical Money Has Begun

As physical currency around the world is increasingly phased out, the era where “cash is king” seems to be coming to an end. Countries like India and South Korea have chosen to limit access to physical money by law, and others are beginning to test digital blockchains for their central banks.

The war on cash isn’t going to be waged overnight, and showdowns will continue in any country where citizens turn to alternatives like precious metals or decentralized cryptocurrencies. Although this transition may feel like a natural progression into the digital age, the real motivation to go cashless is downright sinister.

The unprecedented collusion between governments and central banks that occurred in 2008 led to bailouts, zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing on a scale never before seen in history. Those decisions, which were made under duress and in closed-door meetings, set the stage for this inevitable demise of paper money.

Sacrificing the stability of national currencies has been used as a way prop up failing private institutions around the globe. By kicking the can down the road yet another time, bureaucrats and bankers sealed the fate of the financial system as we know it.

A currency war has been declared, ensuring that the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen and many other state currencies are linked in a suicide pact. Printing money and endlessly expanding debt are policies that will erode the underlying value of every dollar in people’s wallets, as well as digital funds in their bank accounts. This new war operates in the shadows of the public’s ignorance, slowly undermining social and economic stability through inflation and other consequences of central control. As the Federal Reserve leads the rest of the world’s central banks down the rabbit hole, the vortex it’s creating will affect everyone in the globalized economy.

Peter Schiff, president of Euro-Pacific Capital, has written several books on the state of the financial system. His focus is on the long-term consequences of years of government and central bank manipulation of fiat currencies:

read more: http://theantimedia.org/cash-no-longer-king/

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/major-league-sporting-events-to-start-rolling-out-clear-biometric-readers-to-track-fan-activity/
Major League Sporting Events To Start Rolling Out Clear Biometric Readers To Track Fan Activity
“It’s been great,” Torres, a 43-year-old season-ticket holder, said of the service, known as Clear, which offers queue-skipping privileges for six U.S. sports teams including New York’s Yankees and Mets baseball franchises. His interview was necessarily brief. “I’m running a little late."
12/28/16

Want to See the Ball Game? Scan Your Iris First

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:16,17 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: As we have been telling you for the past 7 years now, everything they want to trap you with is first presented as either a time-saving convenience or a device designed for the safety of you or your children. That’s how they get you to adopt it. 47,000 people on various lines to see a Steelers game? No problem. Just scan your iris or wear an RFID tracking device like they do at Disney, and you don’t have to wait at all. You get to speed through the line, and they get to record your biometric data. Good deal, right?

Lazaro Torres, a die-hard Miami Heat fan, was scurrying to reach his seat before tip-off one night last month when he hit an all-too-common roadblock: Two dozen fans stirring impatiently in the security-check line. Not a problem. He slid into a special entrance line, laid two fingers on a print scanner and, with the Heat’s rapid blessing, cruised into the arena.

“It’s been great,” Torres, a 43-year-old season-ticket holder, said of the service, known as Clear, which offers queue-skipping privileges for six U.S. sports teams including New York’s Yankees and Mets baseball franchises. His interview was necessarily brief. “I’m running a little late.”

    Attending a game used to be a low-tech pleasure: Buy a ticket and grab a bleacher seat. Now, with metal detectors and bag checks standard at almost all major sporting venues, companies have begun offering biometric and other tools to create the equivalent of express security lanes like those in airports. Those fingerprints and iris scans also allow teams to track fans’ behavior and purchasing habits, helping them rake in more revenue and fatten profits while triggering at the same time the privacy concerns that dog this sort of technology in other parts of the economy.

Clear, owned by Alclear LLC, also provides similar security services at 16 airports, where passengers can get fast-tracked for $179 a year. At stadiums, teams pay a licensing fee and fans nothing.

Other companies offer streamlining at stadiums and other venues to government-vetted members of PreCheck, the Transportation Security Administration’s service for airline travelers. And Walt Disney Co. theme parks offer expedited fingerprint-based identity scanning to customers who’ve bought certain passes.

Security advocates and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have been calling for stronger protection at large gatherings since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes. Attacks such as the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 that killed three people added urgency, said Lou Marciani, director of the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security at the University of Southern Mississippi.

“Between training and processes and technology, we are trying our darnedest to harden arenas and marathons and high school sports,” Marciani said. source

Epocalypse: The Cashless Society Is Almost Upon Us

There has been endless discussion over the last few years about how we’re heading toward a cashless society and what that will mean. But never has it been as close as it is now. Numerous countries across the globe have begun actively taking steps to limit the use of currency and are rapidly initiating controls on its use.

In conjunction with government policies, some banks are beginning to charge negative interest rates, actually charging customers for depositing their money. Others have begun refusing to allow that cash be stored in safe deposit boxes. Across the board, banking institutions and government are working hand-in-hand to shut down the use of cash.

There are a number of reasons given for this, from convenience to security, but the underlying motive really is control. Bible prophecy makes it clear that a large part of the 666 beast system will be controls on what anyone can buy and sell. With these moves to do away with cash, we’re taking a giant step toward that reality.

The articles below contain more than generic stories about how we’re becoming a cashless economy. They give examples from specific countries, and discuss some surprising steps which already have been taken, that most people aren’t aware of. This move is intimately connected with the “Mark of the Beast”, and for that reason, this is an area to watch closely.

Cashless Society

Cashless Society War Intensifies During Global Epocalypse

This article addresses not just the crises that are driving the move toward cashless societies, but it discusses the move toward a single world currency, one of the hallmarks of the 666 beast system.

The world descended into an economic apocalypse that will transform the globe into a single cashless society. This bold prediction is based on trends in nations all over the earth as shown in the article below.

As we enter 2017, we are only beginning to see this Epocalypse form through the fog of war. The war Im talking about is the world war waged furiously by central banks against the Great Recession as the governments they supposedly serve fiddled while their capital burned.

The governments and banks of this world advanced rapidly toward forming cashless societies throughout 2015 and 2016. The citizens of some countries are already embracing the move. In other countries, like the US, citizens fear the loss of autonomy that would come from giving governments and their designated central bank’s absolute monetary control.

The Epocalypse that I am been describing in this series will overcome that resistance during 2017 and 2018 as it wrecks economic havoc to such a degree that cash holdouts will be ready for whatever holds the greatest promise of saving them from their collapsed monetary systems, fallen banks, deflated stocks and suffocating debt.

If this sounds like some wild conspiracy theory, consider the following: no less Sterling standard of global economics than The Economist predicted thirty years ago that by 2018 a global currency would rise like the phoenix out of the ashes of the worlds fiat currencies:

https://youtu.be/Ct04WHeX67k

Bank Of Ireland Bans “Small” Cash Withdrawals At Branches 

“As central planners the world over grapple with the effective “lower bound” that’s imposed by the existence of physical banknotes, there’s been no shortage of calls for a ban on cash. Put simply, if you eliminate physical currency, you also eliminate the idea of a floor for depo rates.

After all, if people can’t withdraw paper money and stash it under the mattress, then interest rates can be as negative as the government wants them to be in order to “encourage” consumption. If, for instance, you’re being charged 10% for saving your money, then by God you will probably spend that money rather than see the bank collect a double-digit fee just for holding on to your paycheck.

In the absence of physical cash, there’s no way for depositors to avoid that rather unpalatable outcome unless the public starts buying hard assets like commodities with their debit cards. “With today’s technical possibilities, coins and notes are in fact an anachronism,” Bofinger told Spiegel back in May.

Now, in what should be a wake up call to the world, Bank of Ireland has banned branch withdrawals of less than €700.  Seriously.

Tellers will still assist the “elderly” if they have trouble using automated methods of obtaining cash: Under new rules, designed to streamline in-branch services, Bank of Ireland said withdrawals of less than €700 will no longer be facilitated with the assistance of tellers. From mid-November, customers will have to use ATMs or mobile devices for small and modest-sized withdrawals.”  (Zero Hedge)

People really should avert their gaze from the modern survival thinking for just a bit and also look at how folks 150 years ago did it.

These guys were the last generation to practice basic things-for a living-that we call survival skills now.

Survival Things Our Great Grandfathers Did Or Built Around The House. Are you ready to turn back the clocks to the 1800s for up to three years.

When the economic system has fallen your survival will depend on this skills.

Where even banks won’t take cash anymore: Sweden could become first cashless society

Sweden is the nation moving most quickly toward a complete rejection of cash.

Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote “Money, Money,” considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

This tech-forward country, home to the music streaming service Spotify and the maker of the Candy Crush mobile games, has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country’s banks no longer accept or dispense cash.

Cash Ban: Greeks Face “Permanent Cash Controls and Compulsory Use of Plastic Money” 

Greeks are not only suffering financially under the controls imposed by its leaders under economic crisis, but they are also losing their freedoms. The combination leads to an impoverished and enslaved population. Worse, this misery is likely to be exported to other countries, as the entire globe faces the prospect of another economic meltdown.

In a stunning move towards the elites’ endgame of ‘banning cash’, Greek authorities unveiled stricter capital controls for civil servants and pensioners this weekend. By drastically limiting cash withdrawals and forcing the more ‘controllable’ compulsory use of plastic money, Greek authorities hope to stop tax evasion through the use of ‘fake cash registers’.

A shock-measure: civil servants and pensioners will be subject to stricter capital controls than the rest of the Greeks. They will be able to withdraw only €150 per week – with the cash withdrawal cap being €420 per week – that is a total of €600 per month. The rest of their wage or pension they will have to spend by using debit or credit card.”

Once Cash Is Banned They Will Be Able To Force You To Buy Products: “Just Tax Their Excess Account Balance” 


“We’ve seen numerous reports of how banks are actively working with governments to restrict cash usage. JP Morgan Chase, one of the world’s largest banks, has advised their customers that storing cash in their safe deposit boxes is no longer allowed – for your safety, of course. The new policy sounds ridiculous but makes complete sense when you consider that you would then be left with no other choice than to hold your money exclusively in your bank account, where the bank will simply charge you for the privilege of depositing your funds in their fine financial institution.

In the event the President or other bureaucrat declares a financial crisis, the government can move with unprecedented speed to stabilize the system by simply compelling you to spend money to boost economic activity. And by “compelling” we mean forcing you through direct taxation and withdrawal of your funds.

The idea is that either you start spending your money like a good Patriotic American according to the rules and regulations, or the government would just take it from you and reappropriate it as they see fit.

But such a thing could never happen in America – that the government could force a private citizen to purchase a product or service, or face financial penalties and even jail time – right? To answer this question we direct you to the Patient Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare that the Republicans in Congress have already begun the legislative process of overhauling the law (although a final repeal bill is not likely to land on President Donald Trump’s desk for some weeks, even possibly months.)

Besides, you don’t own that money you’re depositing at the bank anyway, because once you deposit those funds, according to new banking rules, you become a creditor to your financial institution and they can pretty much do whatever they want with what was formerly your money.” (source)

War On Cash Escalates: China Readies Digital Currency, IMF Says “Extremely Beneficial”

From Zero Hedge :

“Remember when Bitcoin and its digital currency cohorts were slammed by authorities and written off by the elite as worthless? Well now, as the war on cash escalates, officials from The IMF to China are seeing the opportunity to control the world’s money through virtual (cash-less) currencies. Just as we warned most recently here, state wealth control is the goal and, as Bloomberg reports, The PBOC is targeting an early rollout of China’s own digital currency to “boost control of money” and none other than The IMF’s Christine Lagarde added that “virtual currencies are extremely beneficial.”

By way of background, as we explained previously, What exactly does a “war on cash” mean?

It means governments are limiting the use of cash and a variety of official-mouthpiece economists are calling for the outright abolition of cash. Authorities are both restricting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks, and limiting what can be purchased with cash. These limits are broadly called “capital controls.”

Why are governments suddenly so keen to ban physical cash?

The answer appears to be that the banks and government authorities are anticipating bail-ins, steeply negative interest rates and hefty fees on cash, and they want to close any opening regular depositors might have to escape these forms of officially sanctioned theft. The escape mechanism from bail-ins and fees on cash deposits is physical cash, and hence the sudden flurry of calls to eliminate cash as a relic of a bygone age — that is, an age when commoners had some way to safeguard their money from bail-ins and bankers’ control.”

Apple boss: Next generation of children ‘will not know what money is’ 

“The next generation of children born in Britain “will not know what money is”, the boss of Apple has predicted. Tim Cook, the chief executive of technology giant, forecast the death of cash by the time current university students have a family.

Cash is still used for more than half of payments by consumers, according to Payments UK, the industry body, but its popularity is falling as people switch to cards and smartphone apps such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

Answering questions from students at Trinity College Dublin, Mr Cook said: “Your kids will not know what money is.”

In an outspoken address, he also vowed to deepen his fight against the so-called snooper’s charter. Mr Cook reiterated comments made to The Telegraph this week, stating that his company was commitment to full protection of customer’s data from hackers.

“We plan to continue to encrypt end to end with no back door,” he said. “We will productively work with the governments to try to convince them that’s also in their best interests in the national security sense.” (Source)

Eventually we will end up bartering just like our forefathers and many of the greeks this days that have no other currency. On the bright side, barter has been a part of everyday life for our ancestors for a long time we will need to adapt just like they did.

http://www.survivaldan101.com/epocalypse-cashless-society/

Would YOU let your boss implant you with a microchip? Belgian firm offers to turn staff into cyborgs to replace ID cards

NewFusion is offering to implant the identification chips in employees' hands
Chips contain personal information and provide access to the company systems
10,000 people worldwide are believed to already have microchip implants
But the controversial devices raise questions about personal security and safety


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4203148/Company-offers-RFID-microchip-implants-replace-ID-cards.html#ixzz4YEVZGX9h

Jim Rogers: “We’re About To Have The Worst Economic Problems Of A Lifetime, A Lot Of People Will Disappear”

“Governments love [the war on cash]. Then they can control you…we are not going to have as many freedoms as we have now …get prepared because we’re going to have the worst economic problems we’ve had in your lifetime or my lifetime and when that happens a lot of people are going to disappear.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-11/jim-rogers-were-about-have-worst-economic-problems-lifetime-lot-people-will-disappea


Cash No Longer King: Europe Accelerates Move To Begin Elimination Of Paper Money

In the shadow of Donald Trump’s spree of controversial actions, the European commission has quietly launched the next offensive in the war on cash. These unelected bureaucrats have boldly asserted their intention to crack down on paper transactions across the E.U. and solidify a trend that has been gaining momentum for years.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-10/cash-no-longer-king-europe-accelerates-move-begin-elimination-paper-money

The Globalists Strike Back With A Major Push Toward A Cashless Society

Their agenda may be on the rocks in the United States at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that the globalists are giving up.  In fact, a major push toward a cashless society is being made in the European Union right now.  Last May we learned that the 500 euro note is being completely eliminated, and just a few weeks ago the European Commission released a new “Action Plan” which instructs member states to explore “potential upper limits to cash payments”.  In the name of “fighting terrorism”, this “Action Plan” discusses the benefits of “prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold” and it says that those prohibitions should include “virtual currencies (such as BitCoin) and prepaid instruments (such as pre-paid credit cards) when they are used anonymously.”

This new document does not mention what an appropriate threshold would be for member states, but we do know that Spain already bans certain cash transactions above 2,500 euros, and Italy and France already ban cash transactions above 1,000 euros.

This is a perfect way to transition to a cashless society without creating too much of an uproar.  By setting a maximum legal level for cash transactions and slowly lowering it, in effect you can slowly but surely phase cash out without people understanding what is happening.

And there are many places in Europe where it is very difficult to even use cash at this point.  In Sweden, many banks no longer take or give out cash, and approximately 95 percent of all retail transactions are entirely cashless.  So even though Sweden has not officially banned cash, using cash is no longer practical in most situations.  In fact, many tourists are shocked to find out that they cannot even pay bus fare with cash.

So most of Europe is already moving in this direction, and now this new Action Plan is intended to accelerate the transition toward a cashless society.  The public is being told that these measures are being taken to fight money laundering and terrorism, but of course that is only a small part of the truth.  The following comes from the Anti-Media…

    The European Action Plan doesn’t mention a specific dollar amount for restrictions, but as expected, their reasoning for the move is to thwart money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Border checks between countries have already been bolstered to help implement these new standards on hard assets. Although these end goals are plausible, there are other clear motivations for governments to target paper money that aren’t as noble.

In a truly cashless society, governments would be able to track where everybody is and what everybody is doing all the time.  And in order to have access to the cashless system, people would have to comply with whatever requirements governments wanted to impose on their helpless populations.  The potential for tyranny that this would create would be off the charts, but very few people seem greatly alarmed by the move toward a cashless system all over the globe.

Even in the United States there are calls for a cashless system.  For example, the former chief economist for the IMF wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal not too long ago in which he recommended the elimination of the $100 bill…

    “There is little debate among law-enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitates crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism. There are substitutes for cash—cryptocurrencies, uncut diamonds, gold coins, prepaid cards—but for many kinds of criminal transactions, cash is still king. It delivers absolute anonymity, portability, liquidity and near-universal acceptance.”

Over in Asia restrictions are being put on cash as well.  Legendary investor Jim Rogers commented on what is currently happening in India during one recent podcast…

    The time will come when you won’t be able to buy a cup of coffee without being traced, warns investment guru Jim Rogers. To control people, governments will increasingly seek to hunt down cash spending, he adds.

    “Governments are always looking out for themselves first, and it’s the same old thing that has been going on for hundreds of years. The Indians recently did the same thing. They withdrew 86 percent of the currency in circulation, and they have now made it illegal to spend more than, I think it’s about $4,000 in any cash transaction. In France you cannot use more than, I think it’s a €1,000,” said Rogers in an interview with MacroVoices Podcast.

The reason why this is taking place all over the planet is because this is a global agenda.

The globalists ultimately plan to completely eliminate cash, and this will give them an unprecedented level of control over humanity.

One thing that many fear may someday be implemented is some form of microchip identification system.  In order to access the cashless grid, you would need your “ID chip” so that the system could positively identify you, but of course there are millions of people around the world that do not intend to get chipped under any circumstances.

In the old days, you would be labeled a “conspiracy theorist” just for suggesting that they may try to chip all of us one day, but in 2017 things have completely changed.

Just look at what is happening in Nevada.  A bill has been introduced in the state senate that would outlaw the “forced microchipping of people”…

    State Sen. Becky Harris said a bill to prohibit forced microchipping of people is not as far-fetched as it might seem, because it happens in some places around the world.

    Senate Bill 109 would make it a Class C felony to require someone to be implanted with a radio frequency identifier, such as microchips placed in pets.

    The idea for the bill came from a constituent, the Las Vegas Republican said.

If that sounds very strange to you, then you may not know that companies all around the globe are already starting to explore this type of technology.  For instance, a company in Belgium called NewFusion has actually begun to microchip their employees…

    In a move that could be lifted straight from science fiction, workers at a Belgian marketing firm are being offered the chance to have microchips implanted in their bodies.

    The chips contain personal information and provide access to the company’s IT systems and headquarters, replacing existing ID cards.

    The controversial devices raise questions about personal security and safety, including whether they may allow the movements of people with implants to be tracked.

Technology like this often starts off being “voluntary”, but then after enough people willingly accept it the transition to “mandatory” is not too difficult.

We live at one of the most critical moments in all of human history, and the globalists are certainly not going to lay down and die just because Donald Trump won the election.

The U.S. represents less than five percent of the population of the planet, and in most of the world the agenda of the globalists is on track and is rapidly advancing.

The globalists want a unified one world economy, a unified one world religion and a unified one world government.  The election of Donald Trump was a blow to the globalists, but it has also made them more dangerous, more ruthless and more determined than ever before.

And in case you think that using the term “globalists” is a bit strange, the truth is that even the New York Times is using it to describe the global elite and their global agenda.

We are in a life or death battle for the future of our society, and the globalists are never going to give up until they get what they want.  So now is not a time for complacency, because the very future of our country is at stake.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-globalists-strike-back-with-a-major-push-toward-a-cashless-society

The "Sinister" Side Of Central Bank-Issued Digital Currency


Some things are moving faster than others.

Representatives of more than 90 central banks met in June 2016 at an event organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The three-day Conference on ‘Policy Challenges for the Financial Sector’ included discussion on distributed ledger technologies in banking.

This month the Bank of International Settlements observed that distributed ledger technology in banking has a long way to go. Others believe that they shouldn’t bother.

Meanwhile, there is rapid movement taking place on another front.

It’s coming and it’s coming fast.

Central banks around the world are either exploring or taking the first steps towards establishing digital versions of national (or “fiat”) currencies.

Central bank-issued digital currency is under consideration in Canada, China, Sweden and the United Kindgom. India withdrew 86 per cent of all cash as legal tender in November 2016.

1.27 billion people were given four hours notice.

Last month, we saw early signs from the European Central Bank that it is considering the feasibility of “digital-based money.”

Commercial banks are taking the first steps to issue their own crypto-currencies, such as Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd.

International organisations lead the chorus of support for related initiatives toward the digitization of cash.

Alongside the International Monetary Fund and World Bank is the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, while the United Nations Capital Development Fund hosts the Better Than Cash Alliance.

Organizations dedicated to advancing the technology and its adoption are emerging. They include E-Currency, the sole purpose of which is to promote “central bank-governed digital fiat currency.”

Influential individuals are lending their support by calling for a ban on cash in its large denominations. They include Professor Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, a former Chief Economist of the IMF.

Rogoff is sought after by central banks and is the author of such works as The Curse of Cash.

In case his view on the matter wasn’t clear from the title of his book, he followed it up in the Wall Street Journal with ‘The Sinister Side of Cash.’

Numerous official sources, as well as commissioned works, have laid out the benefits of central bank-issued digital currency.

The Foundery blockchain team at FirstRand Bank Limited in South Africa lay out the case in their paper, ‘The Advent of Crypto-banking: A New Paradigm for Central and Commercial Banking.’

It describes central bank-issued digital currency as a hybrid form of monetary value. It combines a bearer instrument (such as cash) with a registered instrument (for instance, bonds, equities or money held in a digital savings account).

The paper goes on to explain:

    The crypto instrument is a digital hybrid instrument with characteristics of both bearer and registered instruments: it’s similar to a bearer instrument because the holder of a digital private key is the presumed owner of the value it controls, and it’s also similar to a registered instrument because that value is recorded on a ledger (albeit a distributed one).

The paper is revealing. It makes three central claims that are worth testing, even challenging.

First, the paper assumes that human beings are instinctively competitive to the point of violence. It implies that societal interpretation of value is the product of a zero-sum game.

The authors present a scenario in which a hypothetical hunter in the distant past risks violent conflict or the loss of land when s/he leaves it to search for food.

This is a straw man argument. There is little evidence in the archaelogical record that suggests nomad hunter-gathers occupied fixed habitats for any extended period of time.

It is also unlikely that human civilization would have progressed to its present (albeit troubled) state if the only outcomes of dispute were absolute loss or violence, or both.

This is a simplistic representation, and reduces human interaction to naked competitive choice. It is not a credible basis on which to make a case for trusted third parties.

Second, the paper assumes that we live in a world ceteris paribus (that is, where all other things are equal).

Unfortunately, we don’t. Equilibrium is a theoretical premise for modelling. It does not survive its first contact with a world in which uncertainty and complexity prevail.

Indeed, all other things are very far from equal at present.

Oligopolistic power dominates political systems, pushing back against democratic accountability.

Debt overhangs continue to depress consumer demand; a glut of supply in commodities and tradable goods creates deflationary pressure; and companies prefer to write off debt or buy back their stocks rather than invest.

Central banks have stepped in to finance borrowing at interest rates so low that it has unleashed a war between speculators and savers (and savers are losing, badly).

In the ceteris paribus world, this is not supposed to happen. Central banks seem to have become both cause and casualty, misallocating resources to shore up a system and losing credibility while doing so.

Third, the paper makes a leap of faith to suggest that central bank-issued digital currency can bring trust to a trustless distributed ledger, and moderation to negative human instincts.

For instance, it makes a case for banks to serve as “trusted intermediaries” to verify ownership, and even to safely retain private keys. This without any reference to the separation of deposit and investment functions, or to fractional reserve banking.

Is any of this credible or desirable?

The main case for central bank-issued digital currency boils down to the following:

    It can combat numerous ills, including illicit financial flows, money laundering, organized crime and terrorist activity;
    It can help to address tax evasion, which could enjoy popular support; it could also stabilize and even increase the tax base; and
    It can promote financial inclusion.

Most of the voices advocating for central bank-issued digital currency do not, in my view, draw sufficient attention to the following:

First, cash has played little or no part in the largest financial crimes in history.

These include the rigging of the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (or ‘LIBOR’), in which several of the world’s most prominent banks were complicit and are responsible.

These institutions siphoned off gains from a derivatives market that was worth between US$300 and US$350 trillion. Their misdemeanors extends to securities and commodities fraud, corporate fraud, and mortgage fraud.

Accountability? Fines aplenty but no criminal action of significance. In the United States, the latest ‘Financial Crimes Report’ of the Federal Bureau for Investigation available online dates from in 2011.

Second, unaccountable institutions with new and far-reaching powers over money are quite capable of intruding into the lives of people and groups.

Imagine programmable money issued by central banks directing what you can and cannot do.

If you live a lawful life you might maintain that you have nothing to fear, in the same way as you do not mind the harvesting of your personal data on the promise that it makes you safe.

Then, one day, your money is ‘turned off’ because of some infraction that you may or may not have committed.

Mass, digitized surveillance makes this possible today. A central bank-issued digital currency can very, very easily become another tool of social control.

Third, and to address the above, the United Nations World Summit for the Information Society +10 year review in 2015 laid out what people across the planet need from a digital world.

Any steps taken in building the digital world must protect and promote human rights: the central purpose of technological innovation.

Information and communication technologies need to have broad-based benefits for society (and not narrowly for the State or for commerce).

The digital divides, including between women and men, are a sine qua non for human progress.

We need an ‘enabling environment’ that is open, accountable and that can confer full-spectrum benefits to all sections of the community.

Digital innovation needs to build confidence in security, not just for the state, but for individuals, communities and companies.

The way it is all governed must give voice to all: not just institutions and technologists and entrepreneurs, but citizens who can hold public entities to account; and consumers who can do likewise to private entities.

It is unclear if?—?or to what extent?—?central banks and actors advocating for a ban on cash are applying these considerations.

Central banks and international financial institutions represent?—?and work for?—?creditors first and people second. That is why they can be serially wrong with so little direct consequence.

Western creditors were morally and economically wrong about the African debt crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. They were wrong with the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s. They have been wrong with the crisis in the Eurozone.

They continue to misdiagnose the nature of the current “balance sheet recession.” You cannot overcome debt and debt trauma with more supply.

In each episode the negative human consequence has been large and multifold.

These are monumental failures.

Their effects can be measured in the spike in suicides, social dislocation and delinquency, structural levels of unemployment and under-employment, inter-generational inequality, environmental degradation, demonisation of minorities, political reaction, and so on.

This is the backdrop against which we are invited to trust the banking system with central bank-issued digital currency against.

“Sinister?” I’m not sure. I don’t think demonisation helps. The only thing I can say is that central bank-issued digital currency is a huge deal.

A huge deal that needs a big discussion.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-02/sinister-side-central-bank-issued-digital-currency

Is The Tyranny Of A Cashless Society Coming?


Like many people, I am a careful person when it comes to digital commerce, yet nonetheless I had two of my credit cards hacked (twice in the last four years) — one time by a supposedly reliable online retail company, another time when I rented a trailer. And both times, it required an incredible amount of time, police reports, phone calls, etc., just to get back to square one and get my money back.

But my experience was not unusual. Nearly 18 million Americans suffered from some form of identity theft in 2014 alone.

Digital commerce and credit cards are very problematic and are not the panacea that companies and the government want the public to believe.

Looking to a future in which governments abolish cash in useful denominations, it follows that they will then focus on eliminating personal and commercial commerce through the use of compact high-value commodities such as gold and silver, a natural progression if $100 bills are taken out of circulation in the United States.

People today who are living in the legacy of the Barack Obama economy already need a fistful of $20 bills just to buy a week’s supply of groceries. And it’s easy to spend $400 a week on fresh groceries for two people, especially if you buy premium products and organic.

If we consider the increasing trend where banks, institutions and big retailers are regularly hacked, combined with identity theft, digital commerce and credit cards aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and in reality are posing an ever-increasing level of liability on all levels through their use.

The relatively few people who may ultimately control all of the digital wealth of Americans will virtually have control of all the people in a cashless society. This results in a definite loss of freedom and liberty.

There are many, many other ways for law enforcement to hammer criminals and curtail their enterprises, if that is truly the goal. But any method that inhibits or erodes the freedoms of Americans in any way, including limiting or infringing upon person-to-person commerce and personal privacy in any manner, is to be shunned and runs counter to the intents and spirit of our beloved U.S. Constitution.

Digital currency transactions in lieu of cash would allow virtually 100 percent tracking of all Americans, including law-abiding citizens and all that we do.

We have already learned over the past eight years of the Obama-led government that governments don’t necessarily work for or even represent the will of the people. So how can anyone justify giving the government this much power over Americans? There is no such justification.

The vast majority of Americans are not criminals, and therefore any action by government that affects or targets the vast majority of people in order to deal with a small factional percentage of criminals in the population is manifestly unfair. Politicians simply need to do the jobs they are being paid to do, and come up with anti-criminal tactics that strictly focus upon the bad actors, not the majority of law-abiding Americans.

If the minds behind a cashless society are allowed to have their way, America would become little more a monumental ant farm, where the elitist class studies Americans to a much greater extent than ever before — how we move around and what we do, use, eat, watch and listen to — and then uses this deeply insightful personal information, potentially to plot how to control everyone. Things like if we’re allowed to be born (abortions already control this to some extent), how long we get to live, and what we are allowed to do in between. Orwellian, yes, but possible nonetheless.

Brazil played around in past decades on many occasions with reissuing, devaluing and recalling currency to limit amounts in circulation. And the Marxists paid close attention to that exercise.

However, India’s currency games are more immediate and could have a sinister effect, since it is already a socialist state and we know how fond socialists and communists are of controlling all aspects of their populations.

Here’s a video that should be alarming.

Is India executing a plan similar to what may soon be in the works for Americans?

I have to say, it’s looking like living in the countryside on a piece of land that provides sustainable sustenance and a firewall from a population that may recoil and strike out in anger sometime soon is the only viable path to surviving past what may be an ugly and austere future. Anyone who cares to look at the news these days will see riots, murders and unrest all around inside the United States, a result of numerous factors.

Even as much as many Americans admire and respect President Donald Trump, the Marxist-socialist momentum that has already metastasized in America might be too much for him and his team to overcome. Our new president definitely needs our continued strong support more than ever.

Smile and pray for the best, but adequately prepare for the worst.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-02/tyranny-cashless-society-coming

The end of cash? Canadian retailers, consumers shifting to cards, apps

Shoppers looking for the cash register to pay for their purchases at Vancouver’s Kit and Ace active apparel stores in Gastown and Kitsilano will find a complete absence of banknotes.

The Vancouver-based brand — founded in 2014 by family members of Lululemon Athletica founder Chip Wilson — is one of the most notable cases of retailers abandoning bills and coins, which some observers have heralded as “the beginning of the end” for cash transactions in Canadian society.

In September, payment technology company Moneris said in a report that cash will make up only 10 per cent of the money spent in Canada by 2030, with credit or debit card payments and mobile solutions like Apple Pay making up the vast majority of day-to-day transactions.

Rob Cameron, chief product officer at Moneris, said the adoption of cashless payment is accelerating as technologies like contactless (or “tap”) transactions gain wider adoption among merchants. As of 2014, cash still made up 35 per cent of Canadian transactions, but Moneris’s survey showed younger shoppers increasingly moving to alternatives.

“I think if anything, the 10-per-cent projection is conservative,” Cameron said. “If cash gets small enough … more retailers may start turning it off. We are already seeing that; we’re seeing the airlines do that, we’re seeing parking do that, and we are seeing some quick-serve retailers starting to do it.”

Observers say the move to cashless transaction is being driven by merchants and consumers. For the consumer, it is the convenience of tapping a card and being quickly on one’s way. For businesses, tapping is far more efficient than handling change and it’s even more efficient than traditional card payment methods like chip-and-PIN, meaning they can handle more customers in the same time.

“We chose this route because, as a brand, Kit and Ace is forward-thinking and driven by innovation, and our spaces are designed to offer a seamless, efficient shopping experience,” said company spokeswoman Anna Cordon, who said the company’s 60-plus stores in North America, Great Britain and Australia are all cashless.

“We merchandise our product intuitively — smallest pant sizes on the lowest shelf to correlate with customers’ height — we don’t have phones on the shop floor, and we don’t accept cash,” she said, adding that customers have primarily been positive, despite some adjustments. “Our goal is to save people time and remove clutter while shopping.”

There are no laws preventing retailers from refusing cash. Some industries, such as airlines’ inflight merchandise and food sales, have taken particularly to cashless payments. A statement from WestJet said airlines also appreciate the efficiency of not having flight attendants handle cash, allowing them to focus on service.

Moneris’s Cameron said that when contactless cards became widespread in 2013, they took over one-in-five transactions in a single year. The company expects half of this year’s Canadian transactions to be tap-based.

The total disappearance of cash, however, is highly unlikely, financial analysts say. Even as more and more people embrace the convenience of cashless technology, tangible banknotes and coins remain a source of direct contact and trust for many merchants and shoppers, said Hendrix Vachon, an economist with Desjardins Group, the Montreal-based association of credit unions.

Vachon was the author of a Dejardins report last year that suggested Canada should abolish the nickel in the next five years. Oddly, that suggestion is really aimed at strengthening cash in the facing of competition from high-tech alternatives.

“The idea behind that change (that) we propose is that it’s a way to control the cost of cash, because there are costs,” Vachon said, noting the production, handling, calculating and transport of coins and banknotes all cost money for governments and financial institutions using them, thus discouraging their use.

The Desjardins report also suggested dropping the quarter for a 20-cent coin, effectively making all cash transactions’s cent-count end in zero, in the same way that the elimination of the penny limited the count to either be either five or zero. Such efficiencies, Vachon said, would allow cash to survive the onslaught by cashless methods.

Such moves are crucial, since — while many consumers and shops are going cashless and using mobile devices, cards or the Internet to purchase — there remains a large segment of the Canadian population that depends on cash.

“There’s an argument to having universal access to a method of payment,” Vachon said. “The numbers show us that the percentage of access to the Internet in Canada is 87 per cent; that means there are more than 10 per cent of the Canadian population that don’t have access.

“Maybe older people have difficulty adapting to new technology, and lower-income persons don’t have the same access to that technology. If you consider all those factors, it’s hard to believe one day that cash would totally disappear.”

Cameron argues, however, that touchless is starting to convert older Canadians as well. He points to Moneris’s survey figures that show 49 per cent of respondents 65 and older prefer to use tap payments — a number higher than the 48 per cent of those aged 55 to 64 who prefer the method.

“My dad, when he discovered tap, he said, ‘Wow, I figured out that I just tap my card and move. I don’t need my PIN, and it’s super fast,’” Cameron said. “And he’s almost 80 years old. Once you do it once, you realize it’s easier. And for lots of elderly Canadians, it is actually easier than trying to figure out the PIN pad.”

The biggest resistance to going cashless — especially credit cards and mobile apps — has come from small businesses.

Laura Jones, executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, noted at least 1.5 per cent of any transaction using a credit card goes to the credit card company (such as Visa or Mastercard), and premium cards like Infinite Avion cards cost store owners much more.

“For a small business on a slim margin, these can be big costs,” Jones said. “Customers are usually very aware of their own fees, but they are often unaware (that) when a business takes credit card transactions, business owners are paying fees, as well.”

She added resistance is not limited to independent stores. Last year, Walmart Canada stopped accepting Visas at stores in Manitoba and Thunder Bay, Ont., because of a dispute that ended in January. Jones added many stores have fought back, either working through CFIB to lobby Ottawa or educating customers with signs encouraging cash payment — sometimes by offering extras (like a cookie, in the case of one Lower Mainland tea shop) for avoiding credit cards.

“The good news is, the climate is getting better, and the cost of accepting credit cards is coming down,” Jones said, noting Mastercard has recently agreed to give CFIB members rates similar to what the company charges Walmart, a saving of 12.5 per cent for the small businesses. “However, we still hear concerns from small businesses that costs are high, and they continue to ask customers to consider alternatives.”

There are also concerns that cash is important to tax avoiders and supports a “black-market” economy of cash-only transactions. Such cases have been reported in other Western nations like Australia, where the Sydney Morning Herald’s Tony Featherstone wrote last March that many Australian small businesses “flout” tax rules by using cash.

Vachon agrees that reducing tax evasion is a key reason for promoting cashless transactions, but noted of the $80 billion of Canadian banknotes in circulation, half are in $100 bills, indicating that eliminating the large bill itself may be enough to end much of the black-market economy, without having to eliminate cash completely.

“There are several reasons some people prefer to use cash,” he said, noting that he has heard anecdotes about Quebec residents saving up more cash after the ice storms of 1998, which rendered some households without electricity for months. Similarly, experts in B.C. often advise people to keep cash handy in their home earthquake kits.

“Many people feel it’s useful to keep some bill notes in their back pocket as a rainy-day reserve, just in case the other systems stop working. There is trust in something you can feel physically.”

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/companies/the-end-of-cash-canadian-retailers-consumers-shifting-to-cards-apps/ar-BBz8trY?li=AAggFp5&ocid=mailsignout

Credit card with a fingerprint sensor revealed by Mastercard

A payment card featuring a fingerprint sensor has been unveiled by credit card provider Mastercard. The rollout follows two successful trials in South Africa. The technology works in the same way as it does with mobile phone payments: users must have their finger over the sensor when making a purchase. Security experts have said that while using fingerprints is not foolproof, it is a “sensible” use of biometric technology.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39643453

Cashless society getting closer, survey finds

More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment if they could, and at least 20 percent already pretty much do so, a study showed on Wednesday.

The study, which was conducted in 13 European countries, the United States and Australia, also found that in many places where cash is most used, people are among the keenest to ditch it.

Overall, 34 percent of respondents in Europe and 38 percent in the United States said they would be willing to go cash-free, according to the survey conducted by Ipsos for the ING bank website eZonomics.

Twenty-one percent and 34 percent in Europe and the United States, respectively, said they already rarely use cash.

The trend was also clear. More than half of the European respondents said they had used less cash in the past 12 months than previously and 78 percent said they expected to use it even less over the coming 12 months.

Ian Bright, managing director of group research for ING wholesale banking, said he did not believe people would quit cash entirely, but the direction was obvious.

"More and more people will end up with a situation where they can quite comfortably get by for two days, three days, four days, even a week, without ever using cash," he told Reuters Television.

Payment systems such as contactless cards and mobile-phone digital wallets have become so prevalent the issue has become political in some countries.

Cash-loving Germans, for example, have been concerned that a move by the European Central Bank to phase out the 500 euro note by the end of next year is the start of a slippery slope.

Germany is one of the countries that uses cash the most. The ING survey showed only 10 percent of Germans saying they rarely use cash, compared, for example, with 33 percent and 35 percent, respectively, in neighbors Poland and France.

The survey also showed that, in general, countries where cash is much in use were most likely to want to go cashless.

Only 19 percent of Italians said they rarely used cash but 41 percent said they would be willing to go cash. There was a similar trend in Turkey, Romania, the Czech Republic, Spain and even Germany.


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-economy-cash-idUSKBN17S001

In Cashless Sweden, Even God Now Takes Collection Via an App

In the most cashless society on the planet, even God now accepts digital payments.
A growing number of Swedish parishes have started taking donations via mobile apps. Uppsala’s 13th-century cathedral also accepts credit cards.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-14/in-cashless-sweden-even-god-now-takes-collection-via-an-app

Cashless Society Alert: Visa Will Be Giving Up To $500,000 To Restaurants That Go ‘100% Cashless’

The push toward a cashless society is becoming more of a shove.  Before today I had never heard of “The Visa Cashless Challenge”, but after reading about it I have to say that I am quite alarmed.  Visa is trying to “encourage” businesses to go cashless, and one of the ways that they will be doing this is by “awarding up to $500,000 to 50 eligible US-based small business food service owners who commit to joining the 100% cashless quest”.  The food industry is still one of the last bastions where cash is used very heavily, and so it makes sense that Visa would want to target that segment.  Of course the more people that use cards to pay for meals, the more money that Visa will make.

When I go to restaurants, I almost always use cash, and I know a lot of other people that very much prefer to use cash in those situations as well.  But if Visa has their way, soon all of us will be forced to use some form of digital payment instead.  The following is an excerpt from the press release that Visa issued about this new “challenge”…

    Today Visa (NYSE:V) announced it is launching a major effort to encourage businesses to go cashless. Aiming to create a culture where cash is no longer king, the program will give merchants increased ability to accept all forms of global digital payments. Visa will be encouraging and helping merchants go cashless by using innovation to their advantage in order to stay competitively connected to their customers.

    To encourage businesses to go cashless, Visa is announcing The Visa Cashless Challenge, with a call to action for small business restaurants, cafés or food truck owners to describe what cashless means for them, their employees and customers. Visa will be awarding up to $500,000 to 50 eligible US-based small business food service owners who commit to joining the 100% cashless quest.

    “At Visa, we believe you can be everywhere you want to be, and that it should be easy to pay and be paid in more ways than ever – whether it’s a phone, card, wearable or other device,” said Jack Forestell, head of global merchant solutions, Visa Inc. “With 70% of the world, or more than 5 billion people, connected via mobile device by 20201, we have an incredible opportunity to educate merchants and consumers alike on the effectiveness of going cashless.”

Visa would love to eliminate the use of cash entirely because it would mean much bigger profits for them.

And of course cashless systems hold a lot of appeal for governments as well because such systems would allow them to monitor and track the behavior of their citizens much more closely.

As our society transitions in that direction, we will be told that it is all about fighting money laundering, tax evasion and terrorism, but there are other ways to combat those issues.

In the end, many people like to use cash because of the privacy that it offers, and there are very powerful forces that would like to eliminate that privacy.

For now, however, advocates of a cashless society are pushing the economic benefits of such a system.  Here is more from Visa’s press release…

    Visa has recognized the net benefits for merchants when they reduce dependency on cash transaction. Visa recently conducted a study that found that if businesses in 100 cities transitioned from cash to digital, their cities stand to experience net benefits of $312 billion per year. According to this study, in New York City alone, businesses could generate an additional $6.8 billion in revenue and save more than 186 million hours in labor, by making greater use of digital payments. This amounts to more than $5 billion annual costs savings for businesses in New York. The complete results with the benefits of going cashless for businesses will be included in the “Cashless Cities: Realizing the Benefits of Digital Payments” report that will be released by Visa later this year.

And of course the push toward a cashless system is not just happening in the United States.

Over in Sweden, many banks will no longer take or give out cash, and about 95 percent of all retail transactions in the entire country are now cashless.

Of course the EU as a whole is rapidly moving in the direction of phasing out cash.  Not too long ago, the European Commission released an “Action Plan” which instructed member states to explore the possibility of “potential upper limits to cash payments”.

Some of the member states have already adopted such “upper limits” on cash transactions, and by slowly lowering those limits over time those countries could eventually phase out cash completely.

And down in Australia, a “Black Economy Taskforce” has been established to go after tax evaders…

    The Black Economy Taskforce has been established to develop an innovative, forward-looking whole-of-government policy response to combat the black economy in Australia, recognising that these issues cannot be tackled by traditional tax enforcement measures alone.

    The black economy refers to people who operate entirely outside the tax and regulatory system or who are known to the authorities but do not correctly report their tax obligations.

Of course this represents a major crackdown on cash, because most people that operate in the “underground economy” tend to use cash very heavily.  According to Martin Armstrong, there has even been a proposal in Australia to put “nano-chips” into large notes for tracking purposes…

    Michael Andrew, the head of this 1984 style Taskforce to spy on citizens, has proposed that the government should keep track of your $100 and $50 notes by implanting hi-tech nano-chips. He could simply scan your house to see where you are hiding money that the government can confiscate.

Many of us are alarmed by the rise of a cashless society because we know where it could eventually lead.

If government authorities can watch, track and monitor everything that we do and everywhere we go, that opens the door for great tyranny.

And going cashless would also potentially allow government authorities to act as “gatekeepers” for the system.  In other words, the government could require all of us to meet certain conditions before we were allowed to participate in the cashless system, and if we refused to meet those conditions we would be unable to buy, sell, open a bank account, get a job or do much of anything else in society.

The potential dangers to our liberties and freedoms are great, and hopefully we can get more people to understand what going to a fully cashless society could ultimately mean for all of us.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/cashless-society-alert-visa-will-be-giving-up-to-500000-to-restaurants-that-go-100-cashless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8cXBLcfrmc&t=1899s

Revealed: Cash eclipsed as Britain turns to digital payments

Notes and coins set to fall to just 21% of sales by 2026, raising questions for those who rely on the cash economy

Britain will move beyond “peak cash” this year, according to data gathered by the Guardian that suggests notes and coins are rapidly being supplanted as the favoured payment method, particularly in cities.

Debit cards are set to overtake cash as the most frequently used payment method in the UK later this year, according to UK Finance, which represents leading finance and banking firms.

The volume of cash removed from cash machines (ATMs) is falling fast, while other data shows customers are eschewing cash for cards – even for small purchases such as a coffee or a beer.

In 2006, 62% of all payments in the UK were made using cash; in 2016 the proportion had fallen to 40%. By 2026, it is predicted cash will be used for just 21%, according to figures from UK Finance.

ATM data show that in 2016, there were 2.7bn withdrawals from the country’s 70,000 cash machines – the lowest number of transactions since 2010. The total amount of money withdrawn at ATMs has fallen steeply in the last few years; in 2016, people withdrew more than £6bn less than they did in 2015.

Bank of England figures meanwhile show that while the volume of cash in the economy typically increases every year, it is now doing so at the slowest rate since 1972.

In the developed world, Sweden and Canada are at the vanguard of the recent move away from cash, as debit cards, credit cards, phone payment methods and apps and online transfers predominate.

rest: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/feb/19/peak-cash-over-uk-rise-of-debit-cards-unbanked-contactless-payments

More restaurants go cashless, accept only cards and other forms of payment

If you’re craving the Serrano Grilled Shrimp Bowl at the Tender Greens salad chain, don’t bother bringing cash. Tender Greens, with28 restaurants on the East and West coasts, is one of a growing number of eateries that are either shunning cash and only accepting credit and debit cards and contactless payment systems, like Apple Pay, or experimenting with the strategy.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/15/cashless-restaurants-like-tenders-greens-rising-numberat-growing-number-restaurants-cash-no-longer-m/319618002/

Sweden reveals why a “cashless” society may not be such a good idea after all – NaturalNews.com

 Is it possible for a society to function properly without the use of any cash? Sweden could have the answer to this question and more, as the country has had a good run of using digital payment systems so far, and many Swedish establishments have helped cashless payment methods almost become status quo.

In a cashless society, consumers will no longer need to carry physical notes or coins. Instead, they will rely on cards or electronic devices to issue payments for any goods or services that they avail. In Sweden, a system that is based around the usage of such items has worked great so far. But a growing number of citizens are beginning to fear for the worst in the future, thinking that going completely cashless leaves them open to some pretty scary potential scenarios.

Only recently, Stefan Ingves, the current head of the Swedish central bank Riksbank, issued a statement warning the country that it could soon be faced with a situation where private sector banks have taken complete control over the national payment system. In his view, it’s something that’s not really desirable. Therefore, he called for new laws that would help to secure public control over any payment system, mainly because a working payments system is a “collective good” that benefits the general public as a whole. YES! Because the governments of the world will do such a much better moral job of it right?  :D

According to Ingves, the citizens have every right to not let control of payment systems go to private institutions, much less those that are financially interested, especially for certain things like public works and national defense. “Most citizens would feel uncomfortable to surrender these social functions to private companies,” he said. “It should be obvious that Sweden’s preparedness would be weakened if, in a serious crisis of war, we had not decided in advanced how households and companies would pay for fuel, supplies and other necessities.”

Now based on online reports, these remarks have helped to bring cashless society concerns mainstream in Sweden. In particular, a group called Kontantupproret, or Cash Rebellion, has come into prominence. Its leader, former national police commissioner Björn Eriksson, said that the central bank governor’s statements have helped swing things around for the group, which used to get dismissed as the voice of the technologically illiterate and those who were unwilling to “get with the times.”

In Eriksson’s view, a national cashless payment system could be used as a point of attack that would essentially cripple the nation. “When you have a fully digital system you have no weapon to defend yourself if someone turns it off,” he said. “If Putin invades Gotland [Sweden’s largest island] it will be enough for him to turn off the payments system. No other country would even think about taking these sorts of risks, they would demand some sort of analogue system.”

On a separate note, a recent opinion poll also revealed that a large number of Swedes still prefer to use cash over digital payments systems. The results of the survey showed that seven out of 10, or almost 70 percent, of all respondents wanted to keep the option to use cash. Meanwhile, about 25 percent of them want to go ahead and dive right into being a cashless society.

For now, Sweden sees the need to cater to both groups of people, but if the push toward becoming a cashless society picks up speed and succeeds in converting the country completely, they could be in for a rude awakening, considering all of the threats possible.

Read more about possible threats to the world economy at Risk.news.

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-04-29-sweden-reveals-why-a-cashless-society-may-not-be-such-a-good-idea.html

Backlash building to cashless movement

Aaron Bateman pulled out a few $20 bills to pay for a taco lunch in the nation's capital. To his surprise, his money was no good in the city where money is printed.

Surfside, a popular 24-hour Mexican eatery, doesn't take cash. No cash means no register for robbers to empty out, no bills for workers to slip into their pockets and no change counting holding up lines.

The global cashless movement has reached Washington, where a growing number of fast-casual and other establishments are saying no to greenbacks in favor of plastic and mobile payments. Sweetgreen, the national salad chain, went cashless in most of its locations last year. Other cashless spots include a frozen yogurt shop downtown, a posh wine bar and a beer store. Soon, they may be breaking the law.

Critics of no-cash policies say they shut out the one in 10 city residents who don't have bank accounts and undocumented immigrants who can't easily sign up for cards. Some people also pay in cash so they can better track their spending or to avoid having their card information stolen.

Heeding these concerns, several lawmakers have introduced a bill to require retailers to accept cash.

"By denying the ability to use cash as a payment, businesses are effectively telling lower income and younger patrons that they are not welcome," said Council member David Grosso.

His bill is among the pockets of resistance forming against the cashless trend, which has taken hold in countries such as Sweden and India where mobile payments are gaining popularity.

Similar legislation was unsuccessfully introduced in Chicago last year. Massachusetts has an obscure 1978 pro-cash law on the books, but the state retailers association say it doesn't seem to be enforced and state officials haven't offered guidance.

Companies going card-only say it makes good business sense.

Washington restaurateur Bo Blair, whose company Georgetown Events operates eight fast casual and three sit-down restaurants in the city, decided to experiment going cashless when opening Surfside in 2015.

Usually, cost-conscious small businesses operate cash-only to avoid card processing fees.

But cash also has hidden costs, Blair said: armored vehicles taking money to banks. An extra hour for workers to close out the register. Employees swiping money from the till. And some of their places had been robbed.

"Not having to worry about employees stealing or getting robbed is a huge lift off our minds," said Blair.

Few Surfside customers complained and long lunch lines moved quickly, so Georgetown Events stopped taking cash at its seven other fast-casual spots, including the Jetties' sandwich shop, where about 80 percent of customers were already paying with their cards. They didn't make the shift at full-service restaurants where bartenders and servers like taking their cash tips home at the end of a shift.

Bateman, who tried to pay in cash at Surfside, said he was lucky his girlfriend brought her debit card with her so they could pay. The 22-year-old cook, who was on vacation from Norfolk, likes paying in cash so he doesn't have to constantly check his bank account to avoid overdrafts.

"You have your money in your hand and know what you can do with it," Bateman said. "It's a little bit better money management unless you are on top of your account like every five minutes."

After placing his order at Surfside, Richard Selgado said he prefers paying with his debit card.

"Some places, you don't know your surroundings. I've been in situations where I dropped money, and people pick it up and don't tell you," said Selgado. "I wish a lot of places are like this."

Sweetgreen, with a dozen locations in Washington and scores more in Maryland, Virginia, New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts, is perhaps the most high-profile business to go cashless. The company has declined requests for comment on the bill that would force them to accept cash, but officials previously said going cashless helped process as many as 15 percent more sales an hour and led to more people paying with the company's app.

"We believe digital payments are the future, and we want to help lead that charge, not lag behind," Sweetgreen founders wrote in a 2016 Medium post announcing the cashless switch.

Other restaurateurs say refusing to take cash is disrespectful to their customers.

"Not everybody is able to buy a smart phone. Not everybody is in a position where they can get a credit card. Not everybody is even in a position where they have a stable bank account to be able to use the debit card. But they are hungry too, and have $10 in their pockets and they would like to spend their legal American form of tender, known as cash, with you," said Amsterdam Falafelshop Owner Arianne Bennett in an email. "As society and technology evolves, we must ask ourselves always, not just 'can we'? But 'should we'?"

An Amsterdam Falafelshop franchise in the Boston area went cashless in 2016, but corporate intervened a month in. Instead, the franchise put up signs on their counter advising 'While we prefer digital methods of payment, we will of course accept your cash.'

Cava Grill, a fast-growing Mediterranean chain, has debuted a number of cashless options including pre-ordering online and paying in-store with an app. But the company's leadership says the costs of continuing to take cash is worth it to avoid frustrated customers.

"Whether it's for underbanked reasons, for privacy reasons or for budgetary tracking reasons, we want to accommodate them," said Cava chief executive Brett Schulman.

The decision to go cashless also has broader implications in the global battle between the credit card and ATM industries.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, VISA has been a major booster of the cashless movement. The credit card company in March awarded 50 businesses $10,000 each for rejecting cash payments and has released reports touting the benefits of a cashless society.

The International Currency Association launched a "Cash Matters" initiative last year to push back against cashless policies, mostly in Europe. They are also supported by the ATM Industry Association, which declared the bill before the D.C. Council "a historic development in the nation's capital in the long war against cash waged by the card brands."

"When card brands diminish human choice in the payments sector, they corrode a part of freedom itself in the wider economy," said Mike Lee, the ATM group's chief executive.

Advocates for poor people and immigrants say keeping cash as an option is essential for people without bank accounts.

Nationwide, 7 percent of households had no checkings or savings accounts in 2015, according to the most recent federal survey. It was more than twice as high for black people and Latinos.

The most common reason for not having a bank account is the fees imposed on customers who can't meet a minimum balance or other requirements. Some don't trust financial institutions, and others don't have a choice.

Leonard Edwards, 58, said he lost access to his bank account when he couldn't work anymore because of arthritis, and he fell behind on child support payments. Instead, he pays high fees to cash checks and use temporary debit cards. He does not go out to eat much, but when he does, he pays cash and is surprised some restaurants wouldn't take his money.

"It's just a way to keep low-income and poor people out," said Edwards. "We don't have credit cards or money in the bank just sitting around. It's just another hurdle for poor people to maneuver around in the system we live in."

About 11 percent of Washington residents did not have bank accounts in 2015 and another quarter were considered underbanked - meaning they use services such as payday loans, check cashing or pawn shops for money.

Some advocates for the "unbanked" says the focus should be on giving them more payment options. A partnership between D.C. government and financial groups called Bank On D.C. has helped open 11,000 accounts since 2010, said Tanya Bryant, a spokeswoman for the city's financial regulating agency.

"If someone is buying a salad or something, and it's $6, and they need to swipe instead of using cash, the real underlying issue is they don't have a bank account with debit card functionality," said David Rothstein of Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, which works with Bank on D.C. and others to provide low-cost checkings accounts. "That's where the real problem is. It's less about the use of cash, and it's more about financial inclusion."

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Backlash-building-to-cashless-movement-13060811.php

In a pandemic, no one wants to touch it. Why cash has become the new Typhoid Mary

“This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” That’s what it says right under “Federal Reserve Note” and “The United States of America.”

But legal tender won’t be accepted to play at one of the city of Los Angeles’ dozen public golf courses. Or for the $15 charge to enter the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Gardens in Arcadia. More than 30 Armstrong Garden Centers around California also ask for “touchless” payment options, as does the Beehive clothing boutique in Manhattan Beach and the Munch Company sandwich shop in South Pasadena.

The Almighty Dollar has lost some of its might in the time of COVID-19. While most struggling businesses will take payment in any form to make ends meet during the economic downtown, a minority reject cash, fearing that it could be a transmission vehicle for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Some experts predict that the pandemic will accelerate a steady flight by American consumers away from dollars and cents.

“This crisis is clearly pushing us even farther away from using cash in our everyday legal transactions,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and author of “The Curse of Cash.” “And it’s for obvious reasons. No one wants to touch something you or someone else just touched. That’s not going to change any time soon.”

Dollars remain in record circulation around the world, in part as a perceived safe haven for investors and, not infrequently according to Rogoff, as the preferred vehicle for money launderers and tax evaders. But on Main Street, the use of greenbacks makes some retailers and customers flinch, and contrary to popular belief, there is no federal law that requires businesses to accept cash and coins, according to the Federal Reserve’s website.

Noshi Sushi in Koreatown, a cash-only business for decades, has begun taking ATM and credit cards and now completes nearly half its transactions with plastic, said manager Jacky Gomez.

At a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Manhattan Beach, cashier Jennai Dreger notices how cash often comes scribbled with notations. “People put down their phone numbers and I see the area codes are from all over the place,” said Dreger. “And, I’m like, ‘OK, this money has been everywhere.’”

She much prefers the no-touch transactions when customers use the coffee chain’s mobile phone app. “I don’t have to touch their money. I don’t have to touch their card. I don’t have to touch anything. The only contact is between the scanner and their phone,” Dreger said. “And I am like, ‘Yes!’”

Sinnaca Bell of South Los Angeles delivers food for Postmates. He has noticed even before the COVID-19 crisis how cash would be stained, sometimes with what looked like blood. “If you have Venmo, or anything like that, you use it,” said Bell, 41. “Most people don’t really want to deal with cash.”

There has not been specific research on the danger of the coronavirus being transmitted via cash. A National Institutes of Health study found that SARS-CoV-2 remained infectious on cardboard for up to 24 hours. But germs picked up from surfaces can be eliminated by thorough hand washing. The primary means of transmission remains through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

That doesn’t make cash any less creepy to many of the consumers and workers who handle bills, with no way of knowing who has touched them before.

Kay Nam, owner of Current Events newsstand in Manhattan Beach, said she serves customers every day who leave cash and coins rather than take the money, and potential germs, with them.

“With the virus, some people don’t want to touch money at all,” said Nam, whose family has owned the business for 22 years. Some loyal customers also want to leave their change to help support a local business, including one regular who pays $20 for his $2.50 newspaper. Says Nam: “There are a lot of good people out there.”

Good intentions don’t equal safety, though, and most cashiers said they wash their hands routinely, sometimes after every transaction. Or they apply regular shots of hand sanitizer.

At El Tarasco, a Mexican food joint in Venice, cashier Maricela Moreno goes a step further. She takes each new bill offered to her and sprays it down with alcohol. She leaves the dead presidents lying atop a paper towel until they have dried, before returning them to the cash drawer.

Moreno laughs a bit at her money laundering (the literal and legal kind, that is) but adds: “Why not? Just to be safe.”

A shift to other forms of payment has been encouraged by government agencies, such as the California Department of Public Health, which suggests the use of debit and credit cards. Reopening plans for multiple counties also recommend “contactless” payment systems.

The retreat of cash comes with an advance of electronic payment systems like Square, created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and PayPal, also the parent of Venmo.

PayPal added an average of 250,000 new accounts a day through April and now has 325 million active accounts worldwide, up from 277 million accounts a year ago. More than half of its accounts are in the United States.

“I think what’s happened with the pandemic is it’s taken a three- to five-year time frame that it would have taken for digital payments to hit a tipping point and fast-forwarded it to reach that tipping point, literally within months,” PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman said in an interview.

While some older consumers had clung to cash, the digital pay platform now sees the 50-plus age group as its fastest-growing demographic. “Before it used to be cash or checks. Now they are going to a payment platform to send money to the grandkids,” Schulman said.

Some businesses prefer cash to reduce charges from bank card companies. They also don’t suffer a tremendous penalty for holding the money outside of banks, for a time, because low interest rates would generate almost no growth. But there are hidden costs, like the higher rates of insurance paid by companies that carry lots of currency.

Much of the demand for cash in the United States comes from businesses that also save by underreporting their income and thus illegally reducing their taxes, said Harvard’s Rogoff. His 2016 book concluded that about 15% of individual federal taxes are never paid, even after audits, amounting to a $500 million-a-year loss for the U.S. treasury.

While many hail the shift to a cashless economy, others say that it raises equity concerns, because the poorest Americans have no access to digital alternatives. Much of the world, led by Scandinavia and Japan, has moved to assure virtually their entire populations have access to online payments. China introduced a digital currency this spring in four cities, paving the way to its becoming perhaps the world’s first cashless society.

But a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation found that roughly 6% of the U.S. population, about 14.1 million adults, doesn’t have a checking or savings account, and thus can’t access funds online. That gap will have to be closed if America is ever to come closer to a cashless future.

Acknowledging the “bankless” community, San Francisco last year passed a measure requiring all businesses to keep taking cash. The policy remains in place, despite the pandemic.

For now, many businesses just want to reassure customers that their transactions won’t come freighted with a load of microscopic intruders.

“We don’t know when it will be time to take cash again,” said John Chen, owner of the Munch Company. “For right now, we just avoid contact. It’s a good thing for everyone. We keep everyone safe and happy.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-a-pandemic-no-one-wants-to-touch-it-why-cash-has-become-the-new-typhoid-mary/ar-BB14JKPr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcizihWXOiM