RyansWorld: Electronic cash

'''Special Note: Please note that this scenario is meant to be read as entertainment, not as an accurate prediction of the future. Also note that the viewpoints and opinions that may come across in this scenario are not necessarily the viewpoints and opinions of the author.'''

By the year 2024, electronic cash will become a reality for the developed countries of the Global North like the Japanese Federation, the United States of Europe, the United Kingdom and of the countries that are in the Americas. Future economies like the United States of Earth in the year 2105 will become completely dependent on electronic cash.

Checks, however, would remain an acceptable form of payment until they stopped making them sometime in the year 2065 due to rising cost of paper and ink. A boom in check manufacturing occurred in 2037 as fears of the Year 2038 Bug temporarily halted the forward progress of electronic cash. After January 19 2038, the using of checks slowed down again.

Summary
Once portable cash has been abolished from most economic systems, bank accounts will be electronically labelled and sorted by gender. It will become possible for a fundamentalist regime in Cuban-occupied Florida to take away the civil rights of women simply by freezing their electronic bank accounts; similar to move made by the Republic of Gilead in the Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid's Tale. It could be said that Florida's historically low taxes created a misogynistic environment where the wealthy kept most of their cash to themselves and prevent laws from being passed that could have created true gender equality for Floridian women. Electronic cash will become mandatory for all citizens, regardless of their age, mobility level, disability. Portable cash will be sent to recycling centers to become ordinary paper while plastic credit cards will be recycled into all sorts of useful materials like soda bottles and bottled water containers.

By 2045, it will be next to impossible for someone to acquire portable cash to put in their wallet, purse or murse (man purse). All paychecks starting in 2026 will be delivered using electronic cash that cannot be cashed in for portable cash. When Canada abolished the penny in 2013, it helped to slowly pave the way for electronic cash. While the Americans would keep their primitive copper 1 cent units for a bit longer, they were forced to abolish the penny once they became a part of Canadamerica. It will become rude to carry portable cash in public by the year 2030. Eventually, the act of carrying portable cash will become illegal as it becomes linked to organized crime, ransoms from kidnappers and homeless people begging for money on the streets.

Video arcade machines will be reconfigured to accept electronic cash cards. Machines that were not compatible with the new currency system were scrapped for recyclable parts. Electronic cash cards must be acquired from either the government, through an employer, a spouse, through a person's mother/father or a legal guardian. If the person is under 15, the cash card is charged to the parent/legal guardian. Once the child turns 15 and acquires employment, welfare or some sort of pension, then the charge card is automatically charged to the child.



By the 23rd century, electronic cash will evolve into electromagnetic credits (an economic system that uses electromagnetic on a virtual wallet/hard drive) as the humanity evolves into the Republic of Sol, a galactic republic based on their principles of post-capitalism.