Data and analysis on cash usage worldwide show that it is falling in developed countries quite rapidly:

In Australia market analyst East & Partners’ Australian Merchant Payments Report – which directly interviews 2,200 business annually – shows credit card payments have dropped by 11%, while debit card receivables have surged by 56%, and cash receivables plummeted by 46% between 2010 and 2016, and they predict that in longer term usage will continue to fall:

Source & Copyright©2017 - East & Partners

In UK cash usage is now only 47% of all transactions the British Retail Consortium research shows.

But cash is cheapest

The BRC research has continually shown that on average the cost of a cash transaction at the point of sale is lowest:

Source & Copyright©2017 - British Retail Consortium 

Cash & society

Cash has a crucial role in society (both good and bad):

• the anonymity and ubiquity is unmatched
• cash is fundamental to business in most countries with at least 60-80% of all transactions being in cash, although the value share is much less and has fallen below 50% in many developed countries
• cash is the fall back, e.g. recession 2011-2014 share of transactions actually increased
• cash is, according to the British Retail Consortium, the cheapest form of payment in stores, as shown in above table, and is what all other systems are compared to.

The overall conclusion has to be that: cash will only disappear from when individual retailers, e.g. airlines for in flight payments, decide to not accepting cash, not by government edict. It will probably never disappear, indeed some philosophers believe it is a basic right in any society.

Cash and your business

For corporates the key questions about any payment system accepted at the point of sale, include:

• Would you lose/gain business if you accept payment by this method?
• Does it fit your business model and the way you operate?
• Will it fit your business model for the future?

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CTMfile take: Cash will continue to be vital in many merchants for several reasons including that, for most retailers, it is still by far the cheapest.