Reflecting on Personal Experience

After diving deeper into the future of our society, more specifically the future of cash, I have been much more aware of the societal norms. Before I even began to examine others, I looked at myself. If one were to open my wallet, you might find only twenty dollars of physical cash, but the real use of the wallet is to house my debit card, both credit cards, and a Venmo card. Even with that, technology has made it so I barely need any of that, my phone is set up to use Apple Pay, again Venmo, along with Cashapp. So, is cash even the most popular way to pay nowadays?

Approximately one week ago, I started a new job while I live up here in Buffalo for school. Part of orientation and training required me to become familiar with how to work the cash register at the front of the store, before I could advance on and work in my actual department. I spent four hours that day at the register, and only four times did I deal with a cash sale, the rest were either direct debit / credit card payments, or the customer’s billing information was already in the system. From my observations, the individuals who used cash or paid to the exact amount with change when checking out, were all older individuals, and the non cash users who I would describe as young to middle aged, leading me to believe the decline in the importance of physical currency comes down to the correlation between age and technology. I believe that since the younger generations are more familiar and very efficient with technology, smart phones more specifically, that has led to a decline in the use of cash because it is faster, and easier, for those familiar with cashless paying, to pay without cash.

Now, like I stated earlier, I personally rarely use cash, all of my day to day transactions involve swiping a card, or tapping my phone to the register. So then why do I still even carry cash? Our society is not fully to the point where you could complete transactions anywhere without cash, some locations require cash only sales. But I don’t even think that is what makes me carry cash, I think the true reasoning is that cash acts as a feel good, if for some odd reason technology fails me, cash is there as a fail safe.

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