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"Cashless society benefits merchants and consumers, says Visa VP By Lauren Lindberg [Merchant and consumer benefits to electronic payment processing may be accelerating the shift to a cashless society] 13/01/2010 - The world is increasingly moving toward a cashless society, driven both by consumer demand and merchant preferences, a Visa official told the UK newspaper The Telegraph. Steve Perry, executive vice president of Visa Europe, told the newspaper that society is becoming increasingly cashless because consumers have found that electronic payment processing is easier than carrying around cash, and are consequently shifting from paper to plastic payment methods. In addition, debit and credit card processing is better for merchants because it costs less than handling cash, he said. "Because cards are less risky (the associated cost is estimated at 0.02 percent to 0.1 percent per transaction on cards compared with 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent with cash) and encourage spending, they are more efficient and better value," Perry told the newspaper. "Furthermore, card transaction fees are expected to fall.""

"IT MIGHT sound like a contradiction in terms, but for the first time one of the main Irish consumer banks is moving to cashless banking in all its branches. National Irish Bank has written to thousands of its customers this month informing them of a "new style of banking" in which branches will not handle over-the-counter cash transactions. The letter says branches will no longer handle cash withdrawals and lodgements, night safe lodgements and foreign currency cash. Branches will continue to lodge cheques, drafts and postal orders and issue drafts. Customers are advised to obtain cash from "ATMs nationwide" or to seek "cash-back" on their debit cards. A spokesman confirmed that cashless banking was being introduced across the entire NIB branch network over the next 18 months, and had already been introduced successfully in a number of branches. He said the feedback from customers was positive with few complaints. "These branches provide better security for staff and allow us to spend more time, in a better setting, with our customers . . . Customers like them, as our staff have more time to discuss customers' overall needs.""

"Steve Perry, executive vice president of Visa Europe, has a different take on the folding stuff packed in our wallets that most of us take for granted. "Cash is expensive," he says. "We need to be using it less." Expensive? Vintage wines, maybe. Designer clothes, yes. Modern art, almost certainly. But cash? "Why do you think supermarkets introduced cashback?" Perry asks rhetorically. He has me stumped there. I tell him I always thought of it as a service for overdrawn students to drive a few more sales through the tills. "No," he responds politely. "It's because they want cash out of the system so there is less to manage. Processing a transaction on a card can be cheaper than handling cash." Perry is a leading cheerleader for the cashless society. It's hardly a surprising role, but its an argument he is finding increasingly easy to make. Last month, for example, the Payments Council announced to anguished outrage that in 2018 the cheque would be dead. "There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement," Paul Smee, chief executive of the Payments Council, said. Perry extends the same argument to cash. Notes and coins are never going to be fully replaced, he accepts. Currency has, after all, been around in some form or another since 3,000BC. But now that we're in the electronic age, payments could do with a little catching up, he reckons. Visa has recently published an extensive report on the cost of cash to society. Citing numerous independent papers by consultants and national governments, the payments company constructs a compelling case. "