Contrary to predictions, cash is increasing alongside digital payments
In early 2020, UAE peer-to-peer mobile payments platform Ziina launched its offering with the hashtag #cashiscancelled. Any given week, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, the regional press is awash with reports of the e-payments revolution and the rise of the ‘cashless society’.
Yet while the financial technology (fintech), open banking and gig-economy crowd may be declaring the end of cash, cash-in-circulation has been on the rise around the world for several years.
A false binary
In the GCC, the payments industry has long been proclaiming what sociologists describe as a ‘false binary’. Cash and digital payments are presented as alternatives, where the increase in digital payments must be at the expense of cash; and where cash is a thing of the past, digital payments are the future.