Giving Up Cash – a New Paradigm of Money or Just an Innovation in the Field of Financial Settlements?

Abstract

Development of information economy, powered with information technology, provides new methods of electronic payments. According to marketing claims, they are expected to be cheaper, faster, safe and moreover convenient. They also face new requirements posed by rapidly developing Internet trade. Meeting completely new challenges, traditional cash emerges to be anachronism, not suitable for XXI century image. More and more often, the prophets predict the of inevitable cash dismissing. The alternatives to cash electronic innovations should take into account all functions of money: monetary unit, a monetary instrument and means of payment. Traditional cash money incorporate all of them. Regarding the aforementioned functions, cash competing innovations could be discriminated into a few categories: cashless electronic payments, electronic money (sensu stricte concept), electronic cash and virtual currencies. Each of them could be a source of advantages and disadvantages or even threats. The other issue is estimation of consequences of abandoning traditional cash, which are very ambiguous. That is why it seems that “the rumors about cash death have been greatly exaggerated”.