Michael Doron, Managing Director of North America at Payworks, wrote a great piece on why merchant providers need to gear up for the increasingly clustered payments industry. Great read at Paymentsource.com, which you find here.
Source: Cash Product Office
Traveling the world I have seen that what many predict – the cash-less society – feels like it is very, very far away. A prime example for me is Sweden and the discussion that they possibly want to get rid of cash altogether within short. Not going to happen. When you are outside the bigger cities, hardly any small store likes you to pay by card. Mobile wallets are not to be found. It is the culture to have little markets and community cafés and when you try to pay your coffee and cinnamon bun with anything but cash they tell you where the next ATM is (in such cases usually some 30km away).
The more interesting I found this article by Pymnts.com, titled „With Millennials Picking Cash Over Cards, Cash Gains Steam“. Their research shows that while one would expect that older folks would use more cash, the exact opposite is the case. Worth mentioning is that the cash seems to be used mostly for small transactions while bigger ones are paid with cards – to keep the amount of change in your pocket in check. All this makes much sense to me – great read.