The War on Cash has begun.
Leading the charge on this is Sweden. Public buses have not accepted cash for years, it is impossible to buy a metro ticket with cash, retailers or shop owners are legally entitled to reject a cash tender and even churches increasingly prefer card or phone for donations.
Riksbank, Sweden’s central reported that cash transactions made up only 2% of the value of payments in 2015. This is further expected to drop to 0.5% by 2020. Cash transactions in shops barely hit 20%, halved from five years ago, and nowhere close to the global average of 75%. The main form of payment in Sweden today is cards. According to Visa, Swedes use a card 3x more than the average European. In 2015, the average Swede used a card 207 times for payments of goods and services.
Following suit and not far behind is Transport for London (TfL). Since 2014, London buses no longer accepted cash. Research showed that 99% of commuters used Oyster, prepaid tickets, contactless payment cards or concessionary tickets.
Cash less solutions by banks does however come with a clear set of disadvantages, many which have never been explained to end users.
We know that targeted individual surveillance of payments occurs by the likes of the FBI and the NSA, but what if routinized mass surveillance became a norm? Imagine automatic flagging systems triggered by anyone engaging in a combination of transactions deemed subversive.
Governments if they so intend will have the capability to track an individual’s spending, credit history or online searches and social media profiles. This can then be used to decide on whom gets that promotion, loan or if you are unlucky, put under surveillance.
Payment intermediaries will not only have access to all of your online transaction history but also have the ability to censor or stop your transactions. Remember when Visa, PayPal and MasterCard tried to choke all donations from Wikileaks?
We are trading our privacy for the price of convenience and very few of us seem aware of potential problems that might arise through a hidden backdoor. We have no power over our personal information in the traditional financial system. Does that not scare you?
So is there a space between the feel of cash in your hands and the fear that your bank is manipulating you?
I believe the solution lies in a decentralised digital currency system with the innovative utilisation of Blockchain technologies. A platform that bridges the space between cash and banks and provides the best of two worlds.
Imagine a peerless point-of-sales platform that aggregates multiple digital currencies and combines their communities by providing one agnostic solution for all. Due to its decentralization it is not regulated by a financial institution or government, keeping your transactions private and secure.
While there are a number of Blockchain based start-ups in the field of fintech today, quite a few of them simply puts a new dress on an old problem. Very few is actually disruptive in nature. A few that I have personally been tracking this past year include Kraken. Kraken is a global digital asset exchange with support for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Stellar and Namecoin.
Filament is another start-up in the forefront of the Internet of Things. Filament’s IoT stack will allow any device to discover, connect, interact, and even transact, without any central authority required. I will admit that I have been following the success of both of these start-ups as it complements BlockPay, a peerless point-of-sales platform that accepts all leading digital currencies with a few simple taps. BlockPay will be the contribution of myself and the team at BitShares Munich towards our push for more autonomy over our financial systems.
Digital currencies will give control back to the end user. Without a doubt there are still significant challenges to overcome, chief among them financial literacy but we are the best generation to adopt and implement these changes.
It’s time for us to take back control!
Article written by our CEO Christoph Hering
For more information on BlockPay visit our website or for any inquiries send Chris or Rodrigo an e-mail at christoph@BlockPay.ch, rodrigo@BlockPay.ch
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