What about the future of money?
"The main change we've been seeing over the last decade is the increasing
electrification of payments", says Avivah Litan , Vice-President and
Research Director of financial analysts Gartner . "Instead of using paper
currency, or coins, or cheques, we're using more frequently plastic cards or
transfers over the internet."
But that's only half a billion people out of a global population of
more than six billion people. "You'll never get the total population out
of cash, because there will always be a group of people that don't have
bank accounts, so they can't get cards," says Avivah.
So, what is money?
"I think money is much more than the economic definition," says economics
anthropologist, Keith Hart. "In ancient Roman times, money was part of
the cultural repertoire of a society that needed divine protection." The
word 'money' comes from the temple of Juno Moneta , in Rome. The
mythology of Juno Moneta tells that she was "not only the source of
money, she was also the mother of the muses; she was responsible for
divine protection of the arts and sciences."
"In some sense, money represents everything we could desire," says Keith
Hart. "It is the thing that gives us potential access to what we want.
Like language, money is one of the two ways we have to communicate" - a
major factor in the psychology of money. |
