A Move Closer to a Global Cashless Society: Apple Pay Coming to Britain this SummerBy Steven MacMillan Your wallet. Without the wallet. Paying in stores or within apps has never been easier. Gone are the days of searching for your wallet. The wasted moments finding the right card. Now payments happen with a single touch. Apple Pay will change how you make purchases with breakthrough contactless payment technology and unique security features built right into the devices you have with you every day. So you can use your iPhone to pay in a simple, secure, and private way. Despite sounding like an easier and more convenient way to purchase goods and services, many around the world have voiced fears over the move towards a cashless society. Apple Pay is one step closer towards a global cashless society, where cash is banned and every transaction is tracked by authorities. Apple itself has been accused of violating its customers rights by allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) access to users private information, although Apple has denied this charge. If this accusation is true, however, can we trust Apple Pay to truly be a private way to make payments and not another tool for government surveillance? The trend towards contactless forms of payments has accelerated in recent years. In 2014, people using contactless cards to pay in stores and train stations trebled in the UK, with a record 2.32bn spent using this method of payment. Across the Atlantic, the majority of young Americans now prefer plastic to cash, according to a survey conducted last year by CreditCards.com. The survey found: A slight majority (51 percent) of consumers 18-29 prefer plastic to cash, the only age group to do so. A preference for cash becomes stronger in each advancing age bracket, until at age 65-plus, 82 percent prefer cash In all cases, however, the trend is clear. Regardless of some differences in magnitude based on demographic factors, plastic is replacing cash as the currency of choice even for small purchases. Governments and financial institutions have been waging a war on cash in recent years, a war that is only going to intensify in future years. Chase Bank, the largest in the US, has recently entered this battle by enacting a policy that restricts the use of cash. The policy includes prohibiting the storage of cash in its safety deposit boxes. Denmark and Sweden are at the forefront of the move towards a cashless global society, a move that is supported by such initiatives as the UN Capital Development Funds Better Than Cash Alliance. Funded by such notorious organisations as the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, Citi Bank, the Ford Foundation and MasterCard, the alliance facilitates the transition for governments, the development community and the private sector by: Bill and Melinda Gates have been vocal proponents of a cashless society, euphemistically writing in the 2015 annual Gates letter that digital banking will give the poor more control over their assets and help them transform their lives. The couple then detail the importance of mobile phones in enabling this transition: The key to this will be mobile phones. Already, in the developing countries with the right regulatory framework, people are storing money digitally on their phones and using their phones to make purchases, as if they were debit cards. By 2030, 2 billion people who dont have a bank account today will be storing money and making payment with their phones. And by then, mobile money providers will be offering the full range of financial services, from interest-bearing savings accounts to credit to insurance. I am a strong supporter of the people of Africa and around the world having more control over their assets, but a digital cash-free economy in the hands of private corporations and nefarious foundations will only transfer more control into the hands of the elite. A centralized global cashless society would remove any hope of anonymity when purchasing goods and services, in addition to providing authoritarian regimes with the ability to financially cut-off dissenting citizens. So will Apple Pay really be a secure and private way to make purchases, or will it only serve as another way for the corporate-intelligence complex to gather data on every facet of your life? Please tell me what you think in the comments below . . . . Also see the selfnews Post Cashless Society Archive HERE. You can read more from Steven MacMillan at his site The Analyst Report, where this article first appeared. 