The article below deals with the idea that cash gives us more privacy and more control over how we spend it.

The health food chain Tossed has just opened the UK’s first cashless cafe. It’s another step towards the death of cash.
 
This is nothing new. The casting of coins made shells, whales’ teeth and other such primitive forms of money redundant. The printing press did the same for precious metals: we started using paper notes instead. Electronic banking put paid to the cheque. Contactless payment is now doing the same to cash, which is becoming less and less convenient. In the marketplace convenience usually wins.
 
That’s fine as long as people are making this choice freely. What concerns me is the unofficial war on cash that is going on, e.g. the suspicion with which you are treated if you ever use large sums of cash. I’m not sure the consequences have been properly considered.
 
We already live in a world that is about as unequal as it gets.  My worry is that a cashless society may exacerbate inequality even further.
 
It will hand more power to the banks and related companies. Do we want this sector to have yet more power and influence?
 
In a world without cash, every payment you make will be traceable. Do you want governments (which are not always benevolent), banks or payment processors to have potential access to that information? The power this would hand them is enormous and the potential scope for Orwellian levels of surveillance is terrifying.
 
Cash, on the other hand, empowers its users. It enables them to buy and sell without being dependent on anyone else. They can stay outside the financial system, if so desired.
 
There are many reasons to want this. In 2008 many rushed to take their money out of the banks. If the financial system really was close to breaking point, then such actions are justified. When Cyprus’s banks teetered on the cliff of financial disaster in 2011, ordinary people’s money in deposit accounts was sequestered to bail out the system. If your life savings were threatened with confiscation to bail out a corporation you considered profligate, you too would rush to withdraw them.
 
There are legitimate reasons to want to exit the system. I’m not saying we should all take our money out of the bank, but that we should all have the option to. Cash gives you that option.
     
Cash has its uses for private transactions, and not all of them are illegal. Small businesses starting out need the cash economy. Poor people need the cash economy. The war on cash is a war on them.
 
If you listen to the scaremongering, you’d start to think that all cash users are either criminals, tax evaders or terrorists. Sure, some use cash to evade tax, but it’s paltry compared to the tax avoidance schemes Google and Facebook have employed. Google doesn’t use cash to avoid tax. It’s all done via legislative means.
 
Cash means total financial inclusion, a luxury the better-off take for granted. Without financial inclusion – and there will always be some who, for whatever reason, won’t have it – you are trapped in poverty. So beware the war on cash.

Why We Should Fear a Cashless World