The Cashless Revolution is (Slowly) Coming

The big news over the weekend came from a recently released survey from Pew Research Center (PWC). PWC found that the percentage of Americans not making any purchases using cash has continued to increase since their 2015 survey.

By
Ryan P. Cleary
in
News
January 28, 2022

Originally posted on December 17, 2018

In their recently released results, they have found that 29% of American adults are going completely cashless. Compared to the 24% cashless in 2015, that’s a substantial increase. However, what is more intriguing is that Americans primarily using cash each week has declined 6% to only 18% of Americans during the same time-frame. That is indicative of trend away from cash.




Employees need to be prepared

As cash declines in daily use, employees need ways to understand how to best utilize cashless alternatives; most don’t have those resources. Even though some locales are interested in banning stores from going cashless, the trend is unlikely to reverse. The two demographics primarily using cash are the elderly and lower-income households— declining costs and improved technology will likely help close the gap.

For employees, financial education resources will be highly important. How many know how to properly manage their credit and ensure the best credit score possible for their current financial state? How many know the differences between credit cards and debit cards if fraudulent charges appear? What about tools such as Venmo & Google Pay?


While it has not reached a critical point yet, this is a challenge we can prepare for. There are already some services like Khan Academy which offer online education on personal finances and employers have the opportunity to share articles on topics such as mobile wallets to support their employees. However, doing so takes time and these resources are fragmented across the internet. For larger employers, it may be more practical to consider an employee financial wellness platform and offer it as an employee benefit. Regardless, there are ample opportunities to support employees as cash becomes secondary to bits & bytes.

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