Do We Really Need Cash Anymore? – B2 English Reading Test — Exercise 1

Paying by card or phone has become routine in many places. A digital payment can be completed in seconds, and neither customer nor shop needs to handle change. [1] For a small retailer, counting a till and taking money to a bank can be both costly and risky.

Consumers gain other advantages. A lost card can be cancelled, whereas a lost banknote is usually gone forever. [2] Banking apps can sort transactions into categories, which may help users understand their habits.

Yet a fully cashless system creates new dependencies. During a recent network interruption in one town, card terminals stopped for several hours. Shops that still kept a cash drawer continued trading; others had to close. [3]

Privacy is another concern. Electronic payments produce information about where, when and sometimes what a person buys. This data can assist fraud prevention, but it also has commercial value. [4] That does not make cash perfectly anonymous in every situation, but it changes the amount of automatic data created.

Access is perhaps the strongest argument for keeping physical money. Some older people are uncomfortable with apps, some residents lack reliable internet, and not everybody can obtain a bank account. [5] Children also use coins and notes to learn how spending reduces a limited amount they can physically see.

Meanwhile, bank branches and cash machines are disappearing as fewer people use them. [6] A practical future may therefore involve digital payments as the normal choice while guaranteeing reasonable access to cash. The question is not whether technology is useful, but whether convenience for the majority should remove an essential alternative for everyone else.