Hey, has anyone else noticed that Japan has slowly been moving away from cash and that the process is maybe accelerating? I moved to Japan in 2004 and back then you could take a plastic bag of coins to the local branch of your bank and they’d dump it in a large counting machine and let you pay it into your account. Now they won’t do it. Not only that, but at my bank they’ve made it harder to feed large quantities of coins into the deposit bins on ATMs by introducing a plastic slot over where the open basket used to be. I also believe they have reduced the number of coins that can be dumped in in one go (correct me if I am wrong on this).
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There are more and more near field communication payment options, including on your phone, in concert with a growing cultural embrace of non-cash payment options, especially in stores and cafes. The other day, for the first time, I was in a cafe and was told I would not be able to pay in cash at all, which for me meant I had to use my PASMO or credit card or leave.
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It’s also hard to get rid of accumulated coinage in convenience stores as many won’t accept more than a certain number of coins in the same denomination as part of the same transaction (I don’t remember this being the case a few years ago).
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This isn’t a complaint about Japan, as such, because I know this trend is going on in a lot of countries. It just makes me uneasy because, obviously, if we don’t have physical cash any more it gets very easy for governments and banks to punitively cut off access to personal funds, and a lot harder to engage in certain philanthropic activities like giving money to homeless people. If everything is electronic, we, the citizenry, become EVEN MORE vulnerable than we already are.
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Like I said, this isn’t a complain that’s specifically directed at Japan, but Japan is where I happen to live and I wondered is anyone else in the country is noticing what I am.