Bernard Hickey: Farewell to the folding stuff
It is now easier than ever to imagine a New Zealand without notes and coins - and not just for the convenience factor.
A cashless society could help combat crime and tax avoidance by making it much harder to trade illegally and in an untraced way.
It would avoid the problem of cash hoarding if interest rates were ever cut to 0 per cent, or even went into negatives. And a move to a digital currency could also allow us to do without banks for transactions and save a lot of money in processing and conversion fees.
So why don't we do it? Now that most people have smart phones and almost all retailers are connected to a payments network, it would seem a simple step to remove cash from the system.
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