How I went cashless for 2 months Words by Gabriel Pe
T
oday, technology has progressed to the point where some of our usual everyday things have become obsolete. Our traditional landlines are slowly being replaced with smartphones; pens and paper are slowly giving way to styli and tablets; and cash is just one tap away on your smartphone.
While discussing what to feature for this FinTech issue, we really wanted to write about how tech has changed banking. Sure, blockchain may be the future, and data privacy will be as important to banks as ever, but digital wallets have started the revolution that will change how we see and use money. For this issue, I had the idea of going cashless for a few days. I initially wanted to do it for a week as I knew for sure I wouldn’t survive without my wallet and cash around the metro. But lo and behold, I forgot my own ATM PIN and was forced into committing more to this experiment. In case you’re wondering, it’s been almost two months since I started in January. Going cashless meant I needed to use e-wallets. For the experiment, I used three, the first being G-Cash, Globe Telecom’s very own e-wallet. The second was PayMaya, a subsidiary of Smart Corporation. And lastly GrabPay, Grab’s e-wallet solution that is slowly becoming the second most accepted e-wallet payment in the country. Aside from the e-wallets, I also needed to subscribe to my banks’ online services which was pretty easy. All three wallets were easy to top up, just open your respective online bank accounts and use the suggested reloading method. For the past two months, this was how I reloaded all three e-wallets. The last two months of being cashless was hard but not for reasons you’d expect. All three e-wallets performed their tasks well to the point where I slowly became accustomed to just bringing out my phone in restaurants and leaving my wallet inside my bag or pocket. Still, it did not mean I had to forgo having extra cash on me all the time.
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MARCH 2020
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