Again we hear that Fiji is on its way to becoming a cashless society.

This idea has been floated before and in the end, it’s not up to Fiji to decide this alone.

The pressure comes from the World Bank and the IMF the International Monetary Fund.

Just this October, a Fijian delegation attended the annual meeting in Washington. Next to Fiji’s presidency of COP23, the advancement into the cashless society was also on the agenda.

Credit and bank cards are used for years and have already enabled a lot of people to use less cash. Internet and phone banking are going in the same direction.

Online shopping of all sorts and more and more purpose card payment options are rolled out and it looks like this makes life easy.

For sure, no more bank, shop and money-transport robberies.

But we should be also aware that all those electronic trails left behind make us kind of “look through” citizens and endanger our privacy and freedom.