This month the Bank of England is unveiling its new plastic £10 note, hot on the heels of a new fiver and redesigned pound coin.
The new polymer tenner, which features a portrait of Jane Austen, has been designed to last – which is ironic because it might not be around for very long.
That’s because hard cash looks to be on its way out much faster than anyone could have predicted.
Already debit card payments are set to overtake cash payments by 2018, a full three years ahead of the previous forecast.
And this switch from coins and notes to plastic is just the tip of the iceberg. Contactless payments are undergoing a surge in popularity, helped by the increase in spend limit to £30 for a single transaction.
Progress pushes ahead and by next year 13.4 billion debit card payments are predicted – one in three are expected to be contactless – while cash is expected to be used for 13.3 billion payments in 2018.
This means for the first time, it will not be the most frequently used payment method.
Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end for real money?
Well, as an accountant, you’ll know coins have been with us for nearly 3,000 years and various systems have been used to count them and keep track of their movements ever since.
In the future, when every payment leaves an electronic signature, that task should theoretically be easier – although evidence would suggest it’s just inspired fraudsters to get even smarter.
Fears over security, however, are unlikely to stand in the way of the next generation of developments, with mobile phone payments forging ahead. Already, one in five consumers prefers using their mobile to cash or card.
On s1jobs you can find a wide range of jobs in accountancy and there’s not one of them that isn’t going to be affected by the changes ahead.
But does that mean cash will disappear entirely? Well perhaps not entirely.
If you work for a local authority or a charity, you might find yourself dealing with cash payments and donations long after commercial businesses have switched to electronic-only systems.
And while hungry piggy banks remain, and we can still fish down the back of the sofa to get enough change for the bus fare, cash isn’t going to go away altogether.
Coin it in with a brand new Accountancy role from s1jobs.com.