Word: cashless
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Ever since 1888, when philosopher Edward Bellamy foresaw a utopian world where money would be replaced by a card based on the "credit" built up by workers with their labor, financial prognosticators have hailed the coming of the cashless society. Club Med founder Gilbert Trigano tried to create some cashless utopias of his own by asking his guests to pay for things with beads as part of their tropical vacations. But in everyday life, consumers until now have largely chosen to hold on to their coin purses, dollar bills and checkbooks, reflecting an atavistic, under-the-mattress reluctance to part...
Retailers of all kinds are going the cashless way. Supermarkets such as Safeway and Giant, fast-food restaurants such as Wendy's and Burger King, newspaper stands in Philadelphia's CoreStates Bank Plaza and even some taxis in Manhattan are now accepting credit cards. The New York City transit authority has joined the Washington Metro and the Bay Area Rapid Transit line in installing a fare-card system, which has contributed to a 40% drop in fare beating this year and could soon be used to introduce different price levels that reward frequent riders. Some states, among them Maryland...
...cashless era of the philosophers finally arrived? So far, with every advance made by encoded plastic cards and automated billing systems, there have also been glitches or concerns about fraud and privacy. At Chemical Bank, for example, automated teller machines mistakenly deducted a total of $16 million from 100,000 customer accounts in February because of a typographical error in a single line of computer code. The bank bounced 430 checks as a result of the malfunction...
After 45 days without a state budget, Californians wondered how long they could continue to get by in their truly and surreally cashless society. Weariness turned to anxiety when a federal appeals court ruled that the state had no legal authority to continue to pay out scrip for state medical insurance, known as Medi-Cal, to doctors and hospitals that care for the needy...
...higher now than it was 30 years ago. The paperless office remains a secretary's fantasy. Paper-killing technologies like electronic mail and voice % processors go largely unused -- too complicated -- while paper-generating devices like fax machines and copiers are used to the point of abuse. As for the cashless society, most consumers have thumbed down such gee-whiz financial services as electronic banking, home shopping and debit cards...