Visa has issued a challenge to small businesses to go completely cashless and they are calling it "The Visa Cashless Challenge." If they succeed VISA will reward up to 50 businesses with $10,000.
This is the beginning of a more direct push to move us to a cashless society. A move that would allow every transaction to be taxed (driving up costs for the consumer) and tracked (allowing no anonymity) by the government, the credit card companies and anyone the credit card companies sell your transaction history to.
The benefits to the credit card companies, the banking industry and to the government are many. The main downside of moving to a cashless society for consumers are loss of privacy and increased costs (as prices increase to cover the credit card processing fees).
If you don’t believe there is a push to move to a cashless society do a quick Google search for “getting rid of cash” and read some of the articles. There is a very clear but discreet push that is now moving more into the open. If we allow this to happen we will lose an incredible amount of privacy and our cost of everything will be driven up by inserting the financial industry into the middle of every transaction.
The strawman arguments of how dirty cash is along with how it is the preferred choice of individuals and organizations who conduct illicit business is just plain simple minded and silly. Does anyone really think that not having cash is going to somehow stop criminal activity? Really? Has outlawing felons owning guns stopped them?
This is a case of the financial industry inserting itself into the middle of every transaction and increasing our cost of everything we purchase, along with the loss of privacy as now every transaction will be tracked and your history will be sold (have no doubt about that), and the government being able to tax every transaction (even those items you buy a your local garage sale). If you don’t believe your transaction history will be sold review how Facebook, Google and many other technology companies are making their money now.
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