Keep the change

Can we do without cash? Since 2015, digital payments in the UK have outnumbered those in cash, and we are invited by the great and the good to cheer this on. The fully cashless era will be magnificently convenient, they say, with goods delivered directly to the door: no fumbling for change, just tap and go. Some London branches of several chains (Waitrose, Tossed, Doddle) don’t accept cash any more. Many others fast-track customers who can pay by contactless means. Businesses and banks want to abolish cash because they have near-pathological fears of the black market and tax avoidance. Yet we should worry about the death of cash, because physical money possesses worth far above its face value.

Cash is the great leveller. Every penny, pound and banknote sits the same in every hand, identical in value and appearance. A pocketful of change is a gallery-cum–museum. Yes, the Queen is the mainstay, but coins abound in symbols of the Union: the medley of Tudor roses, thistles, ostrich feathers and lions still circulates, now jostling with shards of the Royal Arms. These numismatic quirks reveal the strata of history that shaped the United Kingdom. Where else worldwide would a pocketful of change include royal portraiture, papal titles, Virgilian tags, Roman and Arabic numerals, and three languages? Our notes document British principles: a paper fiver celebrates prison reform, the polymer fiver anti-fascism, a tenner evolutionary theory.

Actual physical money, in the hand, teaches us its true value. Think of the achingly slow harvest of the piggy bank. It’s a sobering life lesson, as is carefully spending your first tooth-derived windfall. With cash, what you see is what you have. Exchanging it demands personal engagement and oils the wheels of a community. At a shop till or pub bar, the exchange of cash takes time: it involves a flutter of physical contact, eye meeting eye and a reminder that trade is human.