IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocadp/18-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is a Cashless Society Problematic?

Author

Listed:
  • Walter Engert
  • Ben Fung
  • Scott Hendry

Abstract

The use of bank notes in Canada for payments has declined consistently for some time, and similar trends are evident in other countries. This has led some observers to predict a cashless society in the future. This paper considers the implications of the abandonment of the use of cash in the future. More specifically, we look at a variety of ways in which the emergence of a cashless society could affect key concerns of a central bank, including seigniorage, monetary policy, payments and financial stability considerations. We find that a cashless society would not generally cause material, system-wide problems. There are a few areas, however, where concerns could emerge: the maintenance of both operational reliability and contestability in retail payments, and the provision of a safe store of value in an (extreme) financial crisis. We note policy options to address these potential concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Walter Engert & Ben Fung & Scott Hendry, 2018. "Is a Cashless Society Problematic?," Discussion Papers 18-12, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:18-12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/sdp2018-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Freedman, Charles, 2000. "Monetary Policy Implementation: Past, Present and Future--Will Electronic Money Lead to the Eventual Demise of Central Banking?," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 211-227, July.
    2. Henry, Christopher S. & Huynh, Kim P. & Nicholls, Gradon, 2018. "Bitcoin awareness and usage in Canada," Journal of Digital Banking, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 2(4), pages 311-337, May.
    3. Christopher Henry & Kim Huynh & Rallye Shen, 2015. "2013 Methods-of-Payment Survey Results," Discussion Papers 15-4, Bank of Canada.
    4. Ben Fung & Kim Huynh & Anneke Kosse, 2017. "Acceptance and Use of Payments at the Point of Sale in Canada," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2017(Autumn), pages 14-26.
    5. Ben Fung & Miguel Molico & Gerald Stuber, 2014. "Electronic Money and Payments: Recent Developments and Issues," Discussion Papers 14-2, Bank of Canada.
    6. Rodney Garratt & Neil Wallace, 2018. "Bitcoin 1, Bitcoin 2, ....: An Experiment In Privately Issued Outside Monies," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1887-1897, July.
    7. Walter Engert & Ben Fung, 2017. "Central Bank Digital Currency: Motivations and Implications," Discussion Papers 17-16, Bank of Canada.
    8. Freedman, 2000. "Monetary Policy Implementation: Past, Present and Future – Will Electronic Money Lead to the Eventual Demise of Central Banking?," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(2), pages 211-227, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agur, Itai & Ari, Anil & Dell’Ariccia, Giovanni, 2022. "Designing central bank digital currencies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 62-79.
    2. Katrin Assenmacher & Signe Krogstrup, 2021. "Monetary Policy with Negative Interest Rates: De-linking Cash from Digital Money," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 17(1), pages 67-106, March.
    3. Marc Sanchez-Roger & Esther Puyol-Antón, 2021. "Digital Bank Runs: A Deep Neural Network Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Sergio Luis Náñez Alonso & Miguel Ángel Echarte Fernández & David Sanz Bas & Jarosław Kaczmarek, 2020. "Reasons Fostering or Discouraging the Implementation of Central Bank-Backed Digital Currency: A Review," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-27, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Walter Engert & Ben Fung, 2017. "Central Bank Digital Currency: Motivations and Implications," Discussion Papers 17-16, Bank of Canada.
    2. Janet Hua Jiang & Enchuan Shao, 2020. "The Cash Paradox," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 36, pages 177-197, April.
    3. Laurent, Alain & Monvoisin, Virginie, 2015. "Les nouvelles monnaies numériques : au-delà de la dématérialisation de la monnaie et de la contestation des banques," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 18.
    4. DIMITRIU, Mihail, 2017. "Currency, Financial System And Virtual Space. A Microeconomic Approach," Journal of Financial and Monetary Economics, Centre of Financial and Monetary Research "Victor Slavescu", vol. 4(1), pages 261-265.
    5. Ben Fung & Hanna Halaburda, 2016. "Central Bank Digital Currencies: A Framework for Assessing Why and How," Discussion Papers 16-22, Bank of Canada.
    6. Buiter, Willem H., 2006. "The elusive welfare economics of price stability as a monetary policy objective: why New Keynesian central bankers should validate core inflation," Working Paper Series 609, European Central Bank.
    7. Michael Woodford, 2001. "Monetary policy in the information economy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 297-370.
    8. Ben Fung & Miguel Molico & Gerald Stuber, 2014. "Electronic Money and Payments: Recent Developments and Issues," Discussion Papers 14-2, Bank of Canada.
    9. Henry, Christopher S. & Huynh, Kim P. & Nicholls, Gradon, 2018. "Bitcoin awareness and usage in Canada," Journal of Digital Banking, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 2(4), pages 311-337, May.
    10. Djaballah Mustapha, 2020. "The Relationship Between the Financial Innovation and the Money Supply: Empirical Study on the Maghreb Countries," Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 34(1), pages 168-178, February.
    11. Fung, Ben & Huynh, Kim P. & Nield, Kerry & Welte, Angelika, 2018. "Merchant acceptance of cash and credit cards at the point of sale," Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 12(2), pages 150-165, July.
    12. repec:zbw:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201511261452 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Nawaf Ahmad Salem Alghusin & Ayman Abdalmajeed Alsmadi & Atala M. Alqtish & Raed Al-Qirem, 2017. "The Relationship between E-Banking Services and Profitability Jordanian Banks as a Case," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(5), pages 114-120, May.
    14. Christopher Henry & Kim Huynh & Gradon Nicholls, 2017. "Bitcoin Awareness and Usage in Canada," Staff Working Papers 17-56, Bank of Canada.
    15. C. Sardoni, 2006. "Why Central Banks (and Money) Rule the Roost," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_457, Levy Economics Institute.
    16. William B.P. Robson, 2009. "To the Next Level: From Gold Standard to Inflation Targets - to Price Stability?," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 285, March.
    17. Thornton, Daniel L., 2014. "Monetary policy: Why money matters (and interest rates don’t)," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 202-213.
    18. Tahiri, Noor Rahman, 2017. "Comparative Analysis of Afghanistan and Pakistan Central Banks Monetary Policy," MPRA Paper 82653, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Nov 2017.
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_023 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Graf von Luckner, Clemens & Reinhart, Carmen M. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2023. "Decrypting new age international capital flows," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 104-122.
    21. Geoffrey R. Dunbar, 2019. "Demographics and the demand for currency," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1375-1409, October.
    22. Grodecka-Messi, Anna & Zhang, Xin, 2023. "Private bank money vs central bank money: A historical lesson for CBDC introduction," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank notes; Digital currencies; Financial services; Payment clearing and settlement systems;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E42 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Monetary Sytsems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bca:bocadp:18-12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.