Bank of England representative: cash disappears from the UK economy country. Bloomberg reported this with reference to the words of the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England John Cunliffe.
A Bank of England spokesman predicted that the popularity of credit and debit cards, as well as the development of online technologies in the future, will reduce the role of cash in transactions in the UK. “Government money from the central bank is disappearing. There are places in London where you cannot use them in your personal transactions, ”said Cunliffe. The authorities will also have to adapt to keep track of all monetary transactions in the future financial system, he said.
He also mentioned that the Bank of England and the UK Treasury are currently studying whether to accept the country's central bank digital currency (CBDC) as an equal means of payment for cash. “The development of technology will not stop. Cash will disappear and the question will be what role the CBDC can play in this, ”said Cunliffe.
According to the Bank of England, cash was the dominant payment method for UK citizens until 2016. After that, they gave way to operations using bank cards, as well as other forms of online payment. At the same time, the pandemic only accelerated digitalization in this area, the representative of the financial regulator pointed out.
In 2019, the trend of abandoning cash in favor of non-cash payments was recorded in Russia. Analysts noted that the country took the lead in the Eastern European market for cashless payments, and called it a “Russian miracle.” The international consulting company The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) indicated that Russia has also become the largest market in Europe in terms of transactions using digital wallets and a leader in the number of secure tokenized transactions at the international level. In addition, experts noted that, on average, the number of non-cash payments in large cities of Russia exceeded 70 percent.