Cash No Longer King as Digital Payments Boom

Money By Forbes Magazine Dec 22, 2021

Forbes writes about the recent “boom” in digital payments in Hong Kong, and the magazine says the city is “heading towards a near-cashless society with FIS, a payments processor, forecasting that paper money and coins will account for no more than 1.6% of point-of-sale (POS) transactions by 2024.”

The magazine attributes the near disappearance of cash in part “due to Hong Kong’s burgeoning e-commerce market, which is projected to grow to US$29 billion from US$21 billion in 2019.”

Forbes notes that the pandemic played a part in taking Hong Kong to a near cashless society, similar to mainland China, which is even further along the cashless road than Hong Kong is in Asia.

“The global Covid-19 pandemic contributed to an explosion in e-commerce across several jurisdictions at the expense of physical retail, which is likely to be an irreversible trend,” they write.