According to the huffingtonpost.com "Last year 27 percent of all point-of-sale purchases were made with cash and that number is expected to drop to 23 percent by 2017." Nowadays, consumers have a multitude of choices in order to pay for products which do not involved handing over cash such as their debit card, prepaid card, gift card, credit card, smart-phone, or things of a similar nature, and more and more people are paying for their products by using this type of payment as opposed to cash. In virtually any marketplace transaction today, there will be at least one electronic option to pay your bill in a non-cash way. While one can applaud these advancements as being of a convenience to the consumer, there are, negative aspects to a cashless society as well.
For instance, the shadow economy is much more inclined to deal with cash based transactions for both convenience, as well as the fact that cash is basically anonymous, unless steps have been taken such as in a string operation, to record the S/Ns of the cash bills being used. Another additional advantage of cash is that it is fungible, which means that the liquidity of cash cannot be beat by any other cash equivalent instrument as cash in on itself, has instant recognizable and transferrable value, whether the electronic grid is up or down, whether websites are functioning or not, and whether banks or open or closed.
There isn't any good reason why cash and alternative means of paying for goods should not continue to exist side-by-side as there are advantages for each type of medium, and in specific situations, each medium will have its advantages over the other. However, the powers-to-be in commerce, industry, banking, and government have an abiding interest into seeing that cash is marginalized within society. One prevailing reason as to why government and other entities would like to see cash eliminated is that the electronic means of payment such as through your smart-phone, credit card, and debit card, all leave a clear and evident footprint so as to how that you as a person are spending your money. This information is invaluable for merchants as well as for the government in being able to profile you quite distinctly. Perhaps even more importantly for these same entities that are tracking you, is that the elimination of cash allows the government and its cohorts in times of civil unrest, economic disturbances and such, to control your access and ability to use your electronic forms of payment, and/or to specifically deny you access to your own money in such a way that you cannot function.
If your smart-phone will not function as a form of payment, and your other plastic substitutes are also not usable, you are in a very vulnerable position which cannot be alleviated unless somebody sympathetic to your plight but not in the same boat as you, takes mercy upon your condition, or unless you satisfy the government authorities in such a way so as to get access back to your money. Cash, on the other hand, is at the present time, fungible, real and valuable. A world without cash is a world in which your freedom has been compromised to such a great extent, that the government and the force that it represents can in a very short order of time, control you, should it so desire, lock, stock, and smoking barrel.