Matthew C Klein, Columnist

If Myanmar Takes AmEx, Why Won't My Taxi?

Physical currency is often an inconvenience for consumers demanded by people trying to hide their income from the tax man.

October 24, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC

By Matthew C Klein

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

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I hate cash. I'm reminded of this every time I find myself in a cab where the driver claims he won't accept my credit card, or when I'm at a restaurant that demands to be paid exclusively in paper bills -- incidents that happen far more often than is reasonable in an ostensibly advanced country.

Bloomberg News reports that paying in cash is normal, however, for people in Myanmar, although this is gradually starting to change. Now that sanctions have been eased, companies such as American Express Co., MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. are building the systems needed for electronic payments. (The biggest challenges are unreliable power supplies and a telecommunications network from the 1960s.) This is great news for Myanmar, but it is an unpleasant reminder that there are still vestiges of a backward cash-only society in the U.S. that ought to be stamped out.