In a cashless society, banknotes and coins are a thing of the past, replaced by cards, mobile wallets, bank transfers, and other electronic payment methods.
It’s where current trends are pointing. Advances in technology and pandemic-era preferences have sped up the move away from cash payments. In 2025, cash accounted for just 46% of payments globally, down from 50% in 2023, according to McKinsey’s Global Payments Report. In some markets, physical currency is already the exception rather than the rule.
Here’s a look at what a cashless society could look like, its potential benefits and drawbacks, and implications for businesses and consumers.
What is a cashless society?
A cashless society is an economic system where physical currency has been completely replaced with card-based or digital payment methods. Instead of paying with bills and coins, consumers in a cashless economy use credit and debit cards, digital wallets, and bank transfers exclusively.
No major economy is fully cashless as of June 2026. But many countries are moving in that direction, as digital payments become more common and cash payments continue to decline. Sweden offers a glimpse of what a cashless future may look like: Only 10% of purchases are made with physical currency. Many retailers, restaurants, and public transit systems rely almost entirely on card payments and mobile apps, and some businesses no longer accept cash at all.
In the US, cash accounted for 14% of consumer payments in 2024, according to a Fed report, down from 30% in 2017.
Benefits of a cashless society
- Faster checkouts
- Better financial tracking and reporting
- Reduced theft and fraud risk
- Higher customer spending
As a store owner, going cashless accelerates the checkout process, helps you better track financial data, and may even increase your average order value (AOV).
Faster checkouts
Cashless payments remove steps from each sale. There’s no cash to count, no change to make, and no till to reconcile at close, moving customers through checkout faster. They also cut the costs of handling physical money, like making bank account deposits, storing cash securely, and arranging cash transport.
The right tools help you improve your checkout process and record keeping. With Shopify Point of Sale (POS), you can also accept contactless payments through Tap to Pay on a supported iPhone or Android device, no extra card reader required. Turning a smartphone into a payment terminal can reduce hardware costs and speed up checkout, helping customers complete purchases with a quick tap.
Better financial tracking and reporting
Electronic payments automatically create a digital record of every transaction. This can simplify bookkeeping, make it easier to reconcile accounts, and provide clearer insights into sales trends and customer behavior. By contrast, cash transactions add a manual step that digital payments don’t: Even when your POS system logs each sale automatically, someone still has to count the drawer, reconcile it against recorded sales, and track down any discrepancies at the end of every shift.
Reduced theft and fraud risk
Keeping no or less cash onsite lowers your exposure to robbery, employee theft, and cash-handling errors. Digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay add another layer of protection. Because they rely on tokenization and biometric authentication rather than sharing a customer’s actual card number, they can reduce certain types of payment fraud while strengthening overall transaction security.
Higher customer spending
Customers tend to spend more when paying with cards or digital wallets. It’s a pattern researchers call the “cashless effect.” A 2024 meta-analysis in the Journal of Retailing, combining results from 71 studies conducted over four decades, confirms this effect. The leading explanation is that cashless transactions reduce the “pain of payment,” loosening the mental brakes cash imposes. Plus, shoppers aren’t limited by the bills in their wallet.
It's a modest effect, and stronger for some purchases than others, but accepting cards and digital wallets removes a ceiling on what your customers can spend, and can bump your AOV in the right direction.
Challenges and risks of cashless transactions
- Excludes customers who don’t use banking products
- Swipe fees
- Depends on internet and payment infrastructures
- Spurs privacy and data security concerns
Moving to purely cashless transactions also adds processing fees on every sale, could limit your customer base, and may leave you unable to take payments if your internet or card systems go down.
Excludes customers who don’t use banking products
Not everyone has access to the tools needed to go cashless. For instance, about 5.6 million US households are “unbanked,” meaning they don’t have access to a checking bank account and other banking systems. About two-thirds of these households rely entirely on cash.
Going fully cashless could make it difficult for these individuals and other customers to shop with your business, potentially limiting your customer base.
Swipe fees
You pay transaction fees when you accept card and digital wallet payments. These “swipe fees” can add up, especially for businesses with high sales volumes or thin profit margins.
You may be able to offset these costs through pricing strategies, or by encouraging lower-cost payment methods, but payment processing remains an ongoing expense that cash transactions don’t impose.
Depends on internet and payment infrastructures
Cashless businesses rely on payment processors, banking networks, and internet connections to complete electronic transactions. If any part of that system experiences an outage, you may be unable to accept payments until service is restored. In Sweden, officials encourage citizens to keep some cash on hand in case cyberattacks or other disruptions disable digital payment systems.
Internet connectivity can also be a challenge in everyday situations. For example, store owners selling at farmers markets, trade shows, or pop-up events may encounter weak cellular service or unreliable Wi-Fi, making it harder to process cashless payments.
Shopify POS’s offline payments feature lets you accept credit and debit card payments without an internet connection—critical for store owners concerned about going fully cashless.
Spurs privacy and data security concerns
Digital payments create records of customer purchases and require businesses to safeguard sensitive financial information. Businesses that accept cards must also follow industry standards, such as PCI DSS, to help ensure payment information is processed and stored securely.
These obligations aren’t unique to going cashless. Any business that accepts cards already carries them. But dropping cash entirely leaves you no fallback, and fully dependent on your payment systems being both secure and available. Protecting customer data may involve encrypting sensitive information, restricting access to payment systems, and maintaining reliable backups.
Cashless society FAQ
Is America going to be a cashless society?
It’s impossible to predict whether the US will completely eliminate cash, but many consumers are opposed to the idea. In a survey commissioned by the Payment Choice Coalition, eight in 10 Americans support laws requiring businesses with physical storefronts to accept cash.
Which country is 100% cashless?
No country is 100% cashless, but some are close. For instance, 90% of financial transactions in Sweden are cashless.
How close are we to a cashless society?
In the Federal Reserve’s 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, 90% of consumers said they plan to keep using cash, and only 5% had gone completely cash free. Some local governments have even passed laws protecting that right. Cities like New York and Philadelphia, along with states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island, generally require brick-and-mortar businesses to accept cash. These rules usually apply only to in-person transactions, exempting online, mail, and phone orders, so ecommerce businesses can remain fully cashless.
