Where in the World is the Cashless Society?

It's been nearly 300 years since paper money became accepted as legal tender. While much has changed about how we make, sell, and buy goods, cash has stuck around. It's been only recently that the road to a wider cashless society has started to really take shape. From apps such as PayPal, Venmo, or Square Cash to mobile payment platforms like Kenya's mPesa, Bangladesh's bKash, or Apple Pay, there are signs that cash is following the path of other "information goods," such as printed photographs, cassette tapes, and DVDs in being replaced by digital alternatives.

Or as Samantha Bee, host of the show Full Frontal, put it recently: "I'd like to talk a little bit about money. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's like Venmo for old people."

Read the rest of the article (by Bhaskar Chakravorti, Ravi Chaturvedi and Benjamin Mazzotta) in the Harvard Business Review, here.

Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Senior Associate Dean of International Business & Finance at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also the founding Executive Director of Fletcher's Institute for Business in the Global Context and author of the book, "The Slow Pace of Fast Change."