Cash May Soon Be Obsolete. Are You Ready?
Updated: Jan 3, 2022
When was the last time you paid in cash? You can't use cash with Doordash and Postmates (unless you're tipping). You can't use cash for Uber. Some people still prefer to use cash. Perhaps there are people because they like the tactile nature of physical currency or because it provides confidentiality in transactions. To keep their money relevant, many central banks are experimenting with digital versions of their currencies. Radical change is coming from China, whose central bank has been running an experiment with a form of cash called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which it envisions as the cash of the future, which will ultimately eliminate the need for paper money.
In China, these services will be licensed to four state banks and three telecommunications companies, who will act as wallet distributors rather than cash depositories. Users will scan barcodes on their phones to make in-store payments or send money to other mobile wallets. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will periodically receive copies of customer transactions, stored on a mixed central and blockchain database. In a CBDC world, the digital code for each virtual currency unit will be held in a digital wallet and transferred seamlessly by the wallet-holder to other people’s digital wallets. An example of this can be seen in companies like Zelle and Venmo. In China, these services will be licensed to four state banks and three telecommunications companies, who will act as wallet distributors rather than cash depositories. Users will scan barcodes on their phones to make in-store payments or send money to other mobile wallets.
The Chinese pilot began with the distribution of 100 million digital Yuan through lotteries in nine cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, Xiong’an, and the 2022 Winter Olympics Office Area in Beijing. By the end of September 2021, the digital currency pilot had recorded around 500 million transactions with 140 million users. E-Yuan will be fully rolled out during the Winter Olympics in February 2022, and if bilateral agreements with foreign monetary authorities are reached, tourists and business travelers in China will be able to obtain a Chinese e-wallet on their own phones.
Learn more by reading this article
The U.S. Federal Reserve, by contrast of China, has seemingly stayed on the sidelines with the digital currency conversation. On a "positive" note, digital currencies may benefit the poor and the “unbanked.” It can be difficult to become approved for a credit card if you are poverty. Banks charge fees for low account balances, overdrafts, and this can be considered expensive. A digital dollar could seemingly give everyone, including the poor, access to a digital payment system and a portal for basic banking services, but that is just half of the bigger picture.
Here are a few reasons why a cashless future isn't as utopian as globalists want to market:
A cashless society means a breach of privacy. There would be no more "paying under the table". Everything would become a line in a data processor. When you pay cash, there is no middleman; you pay, you receive goods or services — end of story. When a middleman becomes part of the transaction, that middleman has the opportunity to learn about the transaction. The United States has weak privacy laws and middlemen can use that information as they see fit - and some of those reasons are diabolical.
We now live in a situation in which consumers’ credit card and other financial information is bought, sold, traded, and accumulated by the private sector at an ever-faster pace — and made all the more convenient and available for access by the government.
The major credit card companies have quietly turned their access to consumer transactions into a new revenue stream, according to AdAge. And not just the networks like MasterCard and American Express, but also issuing banks. “Representatives from the four top credit card issuers — Bank of America, Citi, Chase and Wells Fargo — declined to discuss details of how they use purchasing data internally,” a credit card analyst wrote in 2009, adding that “a spokeswoman from a banking industry trade group acknowledged that the practice is common.”
Google has made secret data-sharing agreements with credit card companies and, according to the Washington Post, now has access to 70% of the nation’s credit and debit card transactions. Google, which refused to explain how its new system works, uses it to track the success of its online ads, which already rely on access to highly personal data about consumers’ search, browsing, and location histories. Although advertisers regularly protest that ad data is based on anonymized information, that system could only work if Google connects people’s online clicks to their real offline identities.
“Behavioral scoring” by credit card companies can be used in unfair ways. One man who had paid his credit card off in full every month received a notice that his credit limit was being lowered. When he asked why, according to ABC News, he was told it was because other shoppers at certain stores he patronized had proven to have poor credit records. It’s very easy to see how that kind of analytics, especially when done in secret, could have strong, even if unintentional, discriminatory consequences.
2. Cashless societies are terrible for low-income communities. Participation in a cashless society presumes a level of financial stability and enmeshment in bureaucratic financial systems that many people simply do not possess. However, opening a bank account requires an ID, which many poor and elderly people lack, as well as other documents such as a utility bill or other proof of address, which the homeless lack, and which generally create bureaucratic barriers to participating in electronic payment networks.
According to government data from 2017, about one in 15 U.S. households (6.5%) were “unbanked” (had no checking or savings account), while almost one in five (18.7%) were “underbanked” (had a bank account but resorted to using money orders, check cashing, or payday loans). Additionally, a cashless society would be problematic for people of color. While 84% of white people in 2017 were what the Federal Reserve calls “fully banked,” only 52% of Black and 63% of Hispanic people were.
3. Cashless societies are terrible for merchants. Merchants pay roughly 2-3% of every transaction to the credit card companies, which can be a significant “tax,” especially on low-margin businesses. With the credit card sector dominated by an oligopoly of 2-3 companies, there is not enough competition to keep these “swipe fees” low. Big companies have the leverage to negotiate lower fees, but small merchants are completely out of luck. Unfortunately, the amount that they pay to the credit card companies is often greater than their profit.
The Globalists’ War On Cash
President of operations and technology at MasterCard, Rob Reeg, predicted that Australia will be a 100% cashless economy within the next 5-10 years.
A cashless society will struggle to succeed if too many fight back. The economic “principalities” stand to benefit handsomely from a cashless society. It all boils down to power, money, and control. Here are just a few of the things the powers that be stand to benefit from:
Here are just a few of the things they stand to benefit from:
Monitoring and surveillance
A war on cash is a war on our privacy. In a society where every transaction is tracked and recorded, nobody can live outside the state’s watchful eye. Imagine the IRS, and every other government entity, having unfettered access to your entire financial life. Actually, we don't have to imagine it, we're living in it.
Tax revenue
The lifeblood of a government is nourished by tax revenue. Unfortunately, the governments know there are countless taxable dollars falling through the cracks. With a cashless society, all currency can be accounted for electronically, governments will collect tax dollars more efficiently than ever.
Control over the masses
By restricting the public’s ability to access and store currency, governments can keep their citizens on a tight leash. Any dissent or rebellion can be swiftly stifled by seizing funds and freezing accounts. And once a precedent is set, it’s unlikely that many would dare to rise up.
This is totalitarian control.
More debt, interest, and fees for megabanks
Global banks thrive off interest from consumer debt and fees from account holders, so snuffing out cash makes good sense for their bottom line. The simple act of a digital currency mandate could generate billions.
Cash is “printed freedom,” German economist Lars Feld pithily offered as a direct rebuttal to his Council of Economic Experts colleague. People “should be entitled to an escape from all-out state control,” Deutsche Welle clarified with regard to Feld’s views.
“To eliminate cash is to say to hell with financial privacy,”cautions Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic. “An end to cash would mean that every financial transaction is exposed to a third party.”
There’s a price for abolishing cash, as you’d expect. In a world without the stuff, “You’d have no choice but to conform to the intermediaries’ automated bureaucracy, giving them a lot of power, and a lot of data about the microtexture of your economic life,” Brett Scott warns at OpenDemocracy UK.
Cashless Society and The End Times
Cash, cryptocurrency, or no cash, we are living in the end of days. The cashless society will be a vehicle to usher in the globalist agenda of control and anarchy. If a tradesman wanted to sell his goods, he needed to be a member of the trade association or guild. Each association had a patron deity and in order to trade, each craftsman had to be willing to worship the deities. If a follower of Christ refused to worship a deity, they were not allowed to buy or sell goods.
In modern communist countries, Christians have been barred and banned altogether from buying or selling goods. Some authorities make it clear no one is to buy or sell to Christ-followers in countries like China or Iran today.
When the Antichrist does come, he will have the power to declare cash as worthless. He will have the power to require a new form of cash and require individuals to take the mark of the beast and pledge their allegiance in order to acquire this new way of buying and selling goods.
As you promote your services and business, think with a kingdom mindset, not a "bill paying" mindset. We need to preserve cash as a widely-available option for making purchases in our society. You're more than a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you are a world changer. Think outside of your revenue stream and use your leverage to raise awareness.
All services at Koinonia Training and Consulting can be done in cash. This will always remain.
Any thoughts?
Dr. Dee Evans
CEO, Koinonia Training and Consulting
CEO, The Dee Evans Group
info@koinoniatrainingandconsulting.com
Dr. Dee Evans is an internationally recognized consultant and life coach. She has been awarded several leadership awards and she is a respected educator and Christian leader. She is the author of several books, which include: "God, I'm Disappointed, Procrastination: A Kingdom Perspective on the Theology of Work". Connect with Dr. Dee Evans by visiting the links below.