Cash

Cash is not dead, but the burdens of ensuring access threaten to break long-standing ecosystems that sustain traditional payments.

The challenge with cash is its nature makes it hard to transition away from it. On the other end of the scale, digital-only businesses may never accept cash, meaning they may always exclude the cash-based consumer.

Months after retooling its Amazon Go store checkout process to accommodate customers who prefer to pay with cash, the e-commerce giant had added a way for consumers to pay for Amazon e-commerce purchases with cash at U.S. Western Union outlets.

Donald Wetzel, the man who devised the first U.S. cash dispenser, says automated tellers will always exist — even as they evolve beyond their initial purpose.

Many in the payments industry insist that cash is becoming less important — but that doesn't mean it will ever go away.

As the U.K. rapidly transitions toward a cashless society — with U.K. Finance predicting that by 2028, just 9% of payments will be in cash — even pocket money is going digital. And the disappearance of tactile interaction with cash changes how kids learn about budgeting.

Streaming and ride-hailing services have become an entry point for cash-reliant customers in the Philippines to try electronic payments, according to a report by Visa Inc.

The London-based retail foreign exchange firm ChangeGroup has acquired the retail branch arm of the Swedish finance group SVEA Ekonomi to serve consumers who continue to demand cash payments.

Mexico is considering a ban on the use of cash for purchasing gasoline and to pay for tolls as a way to fight tax evasion and money laundering, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Walmart has filed a patent application for a digital currency that, like Facebook's Libra, would be a stablecoin backed by traditional currencies. And it envisions a very specific use case where its coin could stand in for cash — or even for a bank account.