The Cashless Journey is a global report produced by Master Card, which tracked the progression of thirty-three prevalent economies as they transition from being cash-based societies to functioning without cash. The report focused on being able to identify the preferences of consumers, the availability of new types of technology and the installation of various government programs which were key driving factors toward this new shift.
The value of all payments by consumers was reported to be 63 trillion dollars spent. This also included those transactions that occurred beyond the point-of-sale regarding retail. In the year of 2011, 34 percent of consumer spending was performed with cash, while cashless forms of payments were at 66 percent.
The nation of Belgium was determined to be at a 93 percentage for cashless transactions, France came in at 92 percent, Canada was established to be at 90 percent for cashless transactions by consumers, the UK reached 89 percent for cashless payments, Australia followed with reaching 86 percent and the Netherlands was at 85 percent for all cashless payments by its citizens. This demonstrated that these nations were moving away from using cash as their preferred method of payment due to the rise of technologies that allow for modern cashless payment infrastructures.
Nations such as the United States of America had achieved reaching 80 percent for cashless payments by consumers. Singapore was discovered to be 69 percent cashless. On the other end of the spectrum, there were nations with less developed economies, but which are advancing, that were found to be at a lower percentage in relation to cashless payments. This took into inclusion Indonesia at 31 percent, Russia at 31 percent and Egypt at 7 percent, as these nations were in reality primarily in the beginning stages of their journey toward implementing cashless payments.
Now that the elements for an infrastructure have been well established for the choices of modern consumer cashless payment methods, there were nations which indeed seem were in the transition period and actively were making the shift away from using cash for payments. Brazil was at 57 percent for cashless payments in its society, Poland had attained 41 percent regarding cashless payments and South Africa was established to have a percentage of 43 percent.
The fastest and most recent move away from the usage of cash for payments within a nation was determined to be China, where the exchange of cash for purchases has seen a decline of as much as 20 percent between the years of 2006 to 2011. China thus was estimated to have reached 55 percent regarding cashless payments.
United Arab Emirates was among a group of nations in which the governments of the respective nations had taken the responsibility to promote electronic payments in order to bring the needed support toward achieving the desired social and economic goals they have set in place. The presence of more technology in Kenya was seen as being responsible for decreasing cash payments, which means that Kenya had a twenty-seven percentage for cashless payments.
