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<title> Plastic money is taking over coins and notes </title>
The use of credit cards has increased a lot lately and has slowly started to push away the traditional trading with notes and coins. From having been confined to the hands of well-off people who used more money than could fit into their purses and businessmen who spent the company's money, credit cards are now more or less in every man's hand. As good as every shop is nowadays equipped with machines that will get money out of our little plastic quadrangles. Big chain stores have their own pay cards and you get bonus points if you use them. There are people who think that within a few decades plastic cards will have replaced all money, and notes and coins will only exist as numbers on a bank account. 

The main reason behind this development is most certainly the new advanced technology and our computerized society. But I am going to leave this for a moment and see what other reasons there may be.

Plastic cards are efficient and easy to use. They make shopping more convenient in many ways. We don't have to make sure that we have enough cash before we go out shopping, just that our bank account is properly filled up. And shouldn't that be the case there is always the credit to rely on. We don't have to worry about standing at the cash desk with a long queue of waiting people behind us and trying to count our notes and coins to the right amount. All we have to do is hand them the card and ID, sign the receit and that is it. I wouldn't say it is much quicker than paying cash, but easier. 

When we go abroad it is of course even better to be able to pay with a card. First of all we don't have to change our money into a foreign currency. And when we are there it doesn't matter if the cashier tells us in French or in Chinese how much it costs. We just give them the credit card and they will sort it out for us. 

It must also be mentioned how much safer it is not having to carry around cash all the time. If you get robbed or loose your purse you can always block the card and you are less likely to loose any money. And another thing concerning safety is that there are in fact people who are allergic to money. Perhaps you can get allergic to plastic too, but in any case it is more hygenic with plastic cards. Who knows what all those coins which have been passed on from so many different hands have been through? After all, your credit card stays with you most of the time. 

I also think that prestige can have quite a lot to do with the increasing popularity of credit cards. Doesn't it feel better to hand over a shining card instead of a bunch of creased old notes? Perhaps it makes us feel a bit like that business man or that rich person. And nobody around us actually knows how much money our card is good for, it could be millions for all they know.

To finish off I would like to go back to the first thing I mentioned - the new technology. I think that the prospective disappearance of money is only a natural consequence of an increasingly computerized society. And perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all.
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