I haven’t touched cash in years.

I barely carry cards anymore. My phone pays for everything — groceries, coffee, parking, flights. It’s fast, clean, and boring in the best possible way.

And yet, there are still people who insist on using cash. Not casually. Not occasionally. Insist. Often loudly. Often framed as principle, rights, or preparedness.

Which raises the question:
What are they actually defending?

Cash feels like control

Cash feels safe because it’s physical. You can see it. Hold it. Count it.

Psychologically, tangibility is comforting. Visibility gets mistaken for certainty. People equate “I can touch it” with “I’m in control”.

But that control is emotional, not real.

Cash is easy to lose, easy to steal, and impossible to recover. Drop your wallet and it’s gone. Lose your phone and it’s locked, traceable, and cancellable.

The risk hasn’t disappeared — it’s just been reframed.

“What if the power goes out?”

This is the most common justification, and also the least thought through.

If the power is out:

• POS systems don’t work
• registers don’t open
• pricing systems are offline
• sales can’t be recorded

Handing over cash doesn’t fix that. Modern retail is built on interconnected systems. Cash doesn’t bypass them. It depends on them.

The blackout argument isn’t planning. It’s catastrophic imagination dressed up as logic.

Who really carries the risk

I used to work retail. Cash was always where the errors showed up.

Tills didn’t balance because of cash. Audits failed because of cash. Stress landed on junior staff because of cash.

Card transactions leave a clean trail. Cash leaves ambiguity, blame, and anxiety — usually for the lowest-paid person in the room.

Insisting on cash doesn’t protect workers. It transfers risk onto them.

Generational lag and identity

For some people, cash isn’t about payment anymore. It’s identity.

It becomes:

• independence
• resistance
• distrust of institutions
• nostalgia reframed as principle

The world changed. Their mental model didn’t.

So cash becomes a stand-in for a version of life that felt simpler, slower, and more predictable.

Cash is comfort, not resilience

This is the uncomfortable truth.

Cash survives because it soothes anxiety. Because it feels familiar. Because it symbolises control in a world that feels increasingly abstract.

But comfort isn’t resilience.
Familiarity isn’t safety.
And habit isn’t a moral stance.

Cashless isn’t the future.
It’s already normal.

Insisting on cash isn’t forward-thinking, protective, or principled.
It’s resistance to a present that no longer matches someone’s internal map of the world.