Editorial Board
Should We Ditch Cash for Good?
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In Stockholm, the homeless now accept credit cards, . Sweden’s high-tech economy has made bills and coins almost obsolete, so equipping the destitute with card readers -- a world first, apparently -- was a natural evolution.
It’s a tidily Nordic expression of a global trend. This is the age of credit cards and debit cards, of PayPal, Square and Amazon Coins. In some places -- parts of Africa, for example, where people can use their mobile phones to buy everything from dinner to insurance -- the need for cash for legitimate purposes has all but disappeared. Worldwide, the number of mobile-payment users is expected to reach almost 250 million in 2013, up from about 200 million in 2012.