The Cash-Free Life

One of the many things I miss about college, and specifically Virginia Tech, is the Hokie Passport. It was a little plastic card with my picture on the front and a magnetic strip on the back that was my key to a cash-free lifestyle (I still have my original, by the way, very much intact). All the dining halls took it. The on-campus coffee and ice-cream shop took it. The bookstore took it. The laundry machines took it. Even the soda machines took it. And many of the businesses in the surrounding town took it as well. There was no signature required. Just swipe and go. Re-entering the real world where using plastic meant signing a piece of paper or a screen felt incredibly primitive.

Now, it seems that Japan is catching on the advantages of a cashless society. In the U.S., we have SmartTag for toll roads and SmartCard for the Metro. Japan has just taken it a step further to include places that Americans would usually use debit or credit cards. I consider Japan an early-adopter society, so it may be several years before you start to see this in the U.S. To address security concerns, the account should not be tied to any other accounts (much like a SmartCard or my laundry card) so that losing a cash card would be no more risky than losing a wad of cash. This may make the contents unrecoverable if the card is lost, but it's better than having your credit cards maxed out or you checking account drained. Just limit the amount of money you have on the card at any given time.

As for whether debt-addicted Americans can handle putting money into a card before spending the money - we have debit cards already. This would just be a mini-debit card account with no signature required. Surely we can handle that.