News, stories and events about currency from around the world.
In many emerging markets, daily financial transactions—buying groceries, paying a utility bill, cashing a paycheck or billing a customer—are notoriously difficult. Banking institutions are few and far between, and large swaths of the population have little or no access to them.
Hearing the story about the coming of the cashless society, and how more and more countries are about to forego physical currency is nothing new. That story has been told ever since the first electronic payment technologies were developed. However, as 2015 comes to an end, some countries such as Australia and Sweden are making headlines as they are about to take that first big step and possibly go cashless in 2016. What are the implications... and will it finally happen?