Virtually Irreplaceable Cash as Public Infrastructure Virtually Irreplaceable: Cash as Public Infrastructure Executive Summary White Paper Cash Matters An ICA movement Written and provided by the Ursula Dalinghaus, Ph.D. Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Ripon College, Wisconsin.
[email protected] 3 Virtually Irreplaceable: Cash as Public Infrastructure Contents Table of Contents About the Institute for Money, 4.0 Design and Denomination: Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) 6 the Role of Cash in Social Practices 36 Acknowledgments 7 4.1 Denomination as a specific manifestation of physical cash 38 Executive Summary 8 Key Assessments 10 5.0 Case Studies 39 Virtually Irreplaceable: 5.1 Puerto Rico – Cash as failsafe 39 Cash as Public Infrastructure 12 5.2 United Kingdom – Cashless payments brings new work 40 1.0 Cash as a Public Good 13 5.3 India – Demonetization and its lessons 42 1.1 Cash is the only form of public money available to all 13 5.4 Sweden – Why cash matters in the cashless utopia 45 1.2 Cash is a public good in a wider sense 15 5.5 China – Social credit scores and 1.3 Cash plays a part in nation building 16 implications for data surveillance 47 5.6 Australia, the United Kingdom, and South 2.0 Central Banks and the Role of Cash Africa – Digital control and “quarantining” as a Public Infrastructure 20 of money for vulnerable populations 50 2.1 Ensuring stable payments and good 5.7 Pushing back against cashlessness 52 governance, safeguarding privacy and access