"Want to resist purchases you'll regret? Use cash. The problem with 'frictionless' firms like Clinkle is that friction can be good
Silicon Valley is getting all excited again, in its Silicon Valleyish way, about the future of how we pay for things. The specific cause of excitement, this week, is the news that Richard Branson has made an investment in Clinkle, a mysterious startup that promises to revolutionise payments in some unspecified way, possibly by letting people send money from smartphone to smartphone using sound. (The company just put out a really strange advertisement that fails to clear things up.)
But predictions about the coming End of Cash have been around for years, growing louder since the arrival of contactless payment, of Square, and of Bitcoin. The other day, research from Tufts University gave the cause a new boost: cash, it revealed, costs US consumers, businesses and governments more than $200bn annually in everything from ATM fees and theft to lost tax revenue. Oh, and it helps spread disease. Could it be time, wondered Tim Fernholz at Quartz, to give up on cash entirely?
It's an intriguing question. But it has a simple answer: no!"
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