New money and the society

Mar 14, 2013 Editorial

Slowly but surely Guyana is finding ways of preventing people from walking around with large sums of cash to conduct the most basic of transactions. Traditionally Guyanese were accustomed to walking around with wads of cash.
Many of the older folk preferred to keep their money in their homes under mattresses or in tins. There were also reports that some people kept their money buried in their yards. This may have been something that was a carry-over from the days of slavery and indentureship when there were no banks and the people had to have ready cash to purchase whatever was on sale by the colonial master.
This tradition continued to the point where the descendants of the slaves and indentured labourers continued with the tradition of keeping cash. Beggars were chief among the hoarders and there have been cases of beggars dying on the streets and people finding all their money strapped to their bodies.
That could have been done then because the rate of crime was not what it is today. Young people were not as violent or as disrespectful of people. The result is that once someone has a large sum of cash that person can expect some unwanted visits. Many people have been robbed of millions of dollars en route to or from a commercial bank.
Some of them have been robbed of similar sums in their homes. Business places accustomed to holding cash have been similarly robbed. And these robberies have not been isolated incidents. They have been so commonplace that whenever people hear about robberies they know that someone had been relieved of a bundle of cash.
As the society progressed and as banking became more popular, people began depositing their cash in the banks. But they maintained the practice of withdrawing large sums of paper and transporting it to another location to complete a transaction.
Many people would recognize that all that was needed was a manager’s cheque that was as good as the currency itself. For some reason, chequing accounts did not become popular among the average citizen. And there were many factors that created this distrust of the chequing system. For one, for someone to accept a cheque one would have had to have developed a business arrangement; there was need for some trust.
However, in this world there is plastic. Plastic money has become so pervasive that in many countries there would be more people with credit cards than people with cash. And plastic money is more trusted than paper money which can lend itself to forgery.
For some time now members of the local business community have been beseeching the banks to promote the use of plastic money and so reduce the risk of robberies and even death. Indeed, some businessmen keen to avoid taxation would prefer to deal in cash. The ultimate thing is that whenever they become victims of a robbery the amount of money they lose would be more than they would have been required to pay as taxes.
But even the banks have not been as proactive as they should have been. Indeed, they all introduced debit cards which are fast becoming popular but these cards are not interchangeable. In short, one bank would be hesitant to allow another to use its facilities. This is the way to go, though.
Now there is mobile money that has the potential to render the postal service a little less needed. One hopes that this introduction would further see the need for people to walk around with lots of cash and so avoid attacks from those whose prime intention is to prey on those who intend to work hard for their livelihood.
Mobile money is nothing new. It has been around some of the developed world for a long time. Japan is one country in which there is no end to money transfer terminals. India with its huge population is also home to a vast array of mobile money services.
In Guyana this could be a blessing for many.

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New money and the society

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