In times past workers were paid their salaries in cash. They would line up during paydays at the payroll teller's window or table, sign after their name on the payroll sheet and be handed envelopes containing their period's salary. Some companies did not even have envelopes. The payroll master just counted out the bills and coins in front of the worker.
Preparing the payroll sheet was tedious. You needed to have a typewriter with a very wide carriage because the sheet was twice as wide as the length of a legal size paper. If the payroll typist was not lucky enough he would fold up the sheet before he could insert it into his standard typewriter. And the payroll master needed to have the correct number of bills and coins for all those envelopes. Therefore he must figure well in advance the number of each denomination to be withdrawn from the company's depository bank.
But the risky side was bringing the cash from the bank. Many payroll money were lost to robbers or lost on the way to the payroll office of a firm. Good for those with big payrolls who had their cash brought to them by the bank's armored vans.
The worker also faced the risk of being robbed of his earnings for the period because his envelope contained all his salary for the preceding 15 days of work.
But that changed with the introduction of ATM payroll accounts. One does not need anymore to carry all 15-days worth of money. An employee does not even have to withdraw cash in order to pay bills. You can pay through the ATM.
However, even with an ATM account a person can still be robbed of his savings. A robber can just force him to withdraw money from the ATM and flee away with the cash.
We should make the next step: doing away with cash completely to make the world safer. The First to disappear will be kidnap-for-ransom operations. Kidnappers cannot just ask the family of the kidnap victim to deposit the ransom to their account because it can be easily traced. Secrecy of bank deposits can be waived by the courts in criminal activities.
What ransom will kidnappers demand? Jewelry? Gold bars? They will find it hard hiding and transporting their loot. Perhaps they can demand that the ransom be paid by transferring credits to their mobile phone accounts as in GCASH or Smart Padala. But those can still be traced.
How will jueteng operators conduct their enterprise if their runners cannot collect in cash? Will they turn to cellphone loads, as some are doing now, as a way of collecting bets? That will move jueteng a little above the underground economy because some of its income will be captured through more usage of cellphone loads which means more taxable income for mobile phone operators.
With the end of cash goes the last money counter. But the world will be a lot safer. And in the case of jueteng, a little increase in government revenue.
OK, I forgot about the problem of counterfeiting which will also go away with the last cash.
