In a world increasingly populated by the digital-savvy, cashless transactions offer a seamless experience to their daily activities.
A much-publicised study last year by Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology said the prevalent use of mobile app-based payment transactions in Sweden was fast shaping the country’s transition into the world’s first cashless society.
It estimated that less than 80 billion krona (HK$72.7 billion), down from 106 billion krona about six years ago, were in circulation there.
But a cashless future is still far off for most countries. Banks, supermarkets, convenience stores, fast-food shops and other retailers see cash and coins as a vital part of their operations, even as credit card and digital transactions grow.
“Cash, as they say, is still king,” Cashmaster International chief executive Gordon McKie told the Sunday Morning Post.
Cashmaster, with headquarters at Rosyth in Scotland, has just established its regional office in Hong Kong to pioneer the introduction of its count-by-weight devices across the Asia-Pacific.
It makes machines that almost instantly count notes, coins, vouchers, tokens and coupons by weight in batches as an alternative to the slower, traditional friction-type bill-counting devices and the manual counting of money.