Bill Gates Makes A Case For A Cashless Society, Where All Electronic Transactions Are Recorded–here-s-why-185938362.html

Bill Gates Hates Cash. Here’s Why

By Peter Coy | BusinessWeek – Thu, Jan 24, 2013 1:59 PM EST

  • Yahoo! Finance/Getty Images –

Billionaires are known for not keeping a lot of spending green in their wallets. But that’s not why Bill Gates hates cash. He hates it because of its effect on people at the opposite end of the wealth spectrum—the world’s poor and unbanked. The Better Than Cash Alliance, which was founded last September and is partially financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, hosted a breakfast at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Speakers from the Philippines, Colombia, and the U.S., among other countries, made the case for why electronic transactions are better than cash payments.

Top five reasons, according to the alliance:

Transparency: Less corruption and theft when payments can be easily tracked. In Afghanistan, U.S. aid agencies use it so workers aren’t so vulnerable to robbery.

Security: The money gets where it’s supposed to go.

Financial inclusion: Electronic payment is a way for unbanked people to establish a record of on-time payment of their bills. This can be an “on-ramp” for them to get other services, such as loans, speakers said.

Cost savings: Moving physical cash around is costlier than zipping electrons. Many poor people, however, still find it cheaper to use cash, because some cashless networks charge high fees.

Access to new markets: This benefit is mainly for providers of financial services.

Kenya is a role model for the developing world when it comes to cashless payment. Its M-Pesa network, launched in 2007, has agents “on every block,” says Neal Keny-Guyer, chief executive of Mercy Corps, a nonprofit that’s a member of the alliance. Mauricio Cárdenas, Colombia’s minister of finance and public credit, said in an interview that he hopes within the year the national legislature will pass a law allowing nonbanks to take in cash and issue electronic vouchers.

The key is ensuring that the people who take in the cash are as well-supervised as bank tellers. “We see this as a first step,” Cárdenas said.


Posted on January 26, 2013, in Economy / Finance, Science / Technology and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.

  1. While those are all valid points, I still have lingering questions. What if there’s a natural disaster that wipes out all the servers where your financial accounts are stored? If there’s a power outage, does that mean you have no access to money? What kind of security would ensure that our money is safe from cyber terrorism?

    • Those are all valid questions, in which they will probably never answer. It seems as though they want this system implemented on the majority of the world’s population , which are ‘world’s poor and unbanked,’ while the world’s elite and rich minority are exempt from this system and at the same time they keep all the physical wealth on the earth to themselves (Gold, Silver, Land, Means of Production, etc). This electronic cashless society system is one step further from the current fiat currency system, which is a paper currency in which has no intrinsic value, kind of like the US dollar. In other words, the electronic cashless society is the fiat currency system without the fiat paper,and it’s made possible through today’s wireless technology, and RFID chips.

  2. First of all, only 3% of money is currently in cash form, so we’re nearly already there. Secondly, the control which banks have over money creation, interest rates, etc., already creates poverty in the first place. Making everything in regards to money electronic, would make their ability to control the currency people use even more intrusive (if that’s possible(.

    “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws” — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

  3. Bill Gates is well known for his Actions to Destroy this Planet Starting with Reducing the Population. This is another act of war against the people. The plan is to garnish wages whenever government sees fit. The banks can use this extra cash to create 10 times more money in Loans. Every 10 dollars in Loans is backed by one real dollar in the bank. It is the same as a cab company wanting you to use a new currency. They take in the money and can use it as they please while you are playing around with fake notes. Don’t listen to their reasoning. It is Neuro Linguistic Programming to make you comply. Oppose anything Bill Gates Supports.

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