Looks like cash is here to stay

SINGAPORE is at the forefront of the global effort to move towards being cashless. The government's stated strategy is to maximise the use of digital-payment systems and move away from cash to reduce costs.

Yet the use of cash remains popular in the city-state. Cash in circulation in Singapore is 8.8 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 4.4 per cent in Australia and 2.12 per cent in Sweden.

A KPMG report commissioned by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in August 2016 says that payment preferences still remain largely paper-based. Consumers use cash for small-value transactions such as dining out at one of Singapore's 6,100 hawker centres; cash is also used for higher-value transactions such as private tuition and to pay for domestic help. Cash remains favoured because of merchant barriers to the adoption of electronic payments.