Can Anger Push Mobile Payment Adoption?
What’s going to trigger mobile payment adoption? Better use cases? Better pricing?
How about Occupy Wall Street-worthy anger?
That seems to be the angle being playing by the No Cash Day 2012 campaign that seems to be sputtering to life.
No Cash Day will purportedly take place on June 21. On that date, conscientious citizens will rely solely on digital currency rather than cash “because notes and coins are expensive, falsifiable, dirty, polluting and promote evasion,” according to the effort’s Facebook page. The fact that digital currency can also be falsified does not seem to matter much. So far 184 people say they will participate in No Cash Day.
The effort appears to have sprouted from Italy. Apparently — and I haven’t been able to confirm this — the Italian Ministry of Economic Development spurred the first No Cash Day last year. This year, Italy again is taking the lead, with most of the expected participants to date located there. But the idea seems to be bleeding to other countries with expected no-cashers in Russian and France, among other locations. A key media driver for the event is the War on Cash website.
We talk about “class wars” and “Occupy Anything” here in this nation, and generally these political ideas are an anathema to traditional banking. No Cash Day, however, seems to tap into that spirit to the general advancement of a key banking innovation — whether you agree with the political idea or not. With mobile payment adoption a half-step behind expectations today, a little spirit might just help move things along.
What’s going to trigger mobile payment adoption? Better use cases? Better pricing?
How about Occupy Wall Street-worthy anger?
That seems to be the angle being playing by the No Cash Day 2012 campaign that seems to be sputtering to life.
No Cash Day will purportedly take place on June 21. On that date, conscientious citizens will rely solely on digital currency rather than cash “because notes and coins are expensive, falsifiable, dirty, polluting and promote evasion,” according to the effort’s Facebook page. The fact that digital currency can also be falsified does not seem to matter much. So far 184 people say they will participate in No Cash Day.
The effort appears to have sprouted from Italy. Apparently — and I haven’t been able to confirm this — the Italian Ministry of Economic Development spurred the first No Cash Day last year. This year, Italy again is taking the lead, with most of the expected participants to date located there. But the idea seems to be bleeding to other countries with expected no-cashers in Russian and France, among other locations. A key media driver for the event is the War on Cash website.
We talk about “class wars” and “Occupy Anything” here in this nation, and generally these political ideas are an anathema to traditional banking. No Cash Day, however, seems to tap into that spirit to the general advancement of a key banking innovation — whether you agree with the political idea or not. With mobile payment adoption a half-step behind expectations today, a little spirit might just help move things along.
