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Let’s hear it for the plastic fantastic! Yes, debit card payments have overtaken hard cash for the first time.
New figures show a total of 13.2 billion debit card payments were made last year compared to 13.1 billion cash payments and an estimated 3.4 million people hardly used cash at all.
So is it finally a case of goodbye to the folding stuff? Well it could be . . . but of course it’s never as simple as that.
Financial transactions have taken on all kinds of shapes and hues and cards and their successors – wearable contactless devices and mobile payments – are just the latest in a long line of monetary systems.
If you want to work in financial services and you’re looking for a brand new position on s1jobs, these latest figures could be significant.
How do you keep track of petty cash if cash no longer exists? And would it be easier to monitor payments of all kinds if we lived in a completely electronic world?
While we ponder these questions, let’s take a closer look at some of the monetary arrangements that have served us through the years.
Dowries
Need to finance a new castle or a war against your enemies? In the Middle Ages you didn’t take out a loan, you married a princess for her dowry. This could have included an army or even a whole kingdom.
Bitcoin
It’s had its ups and downs but electronic money is still around and all kinds of people, including Baroness Michelle Mone, are muscling in on the world of crypto currency.
Gold
Ah yes. We were bound to get round to the shiny stuff eventually. Its intrinsic value comes from the fact it’s rare enough not everyone could make coins out of it, but sufficiently plentiful there was enough to go round. Then there’s the fact it doesn’t rust. And did we mention it’s pretty?
Bartering
You give me a camel and I’ll let you have those rolls of papyrus. It’s as simple as that. Bartering is still around and all kinds of communities exist where you can trade babysitting for haircuts, or bowls of raspberries for dog walking duties. But there are also global bartering systems that allows companies to do deals with other organisations, swapping goods and services in all kinds of inventive ways.
For a thoroughly modern way to land a top role in Financial Services visit s1jobs.