Give cash the heave ho, me hearties

There are some people, in some parts of the world, who still prefer cash over any form of electronic alternative. My mum, for example. But her demands on the Treasury are modest. In other countries, cash has a bigger impact, because local distributed entrepreneurs need it for business-to-business transactions.

Somali pirates are reported to have received a total of $12.3m (£7.6m) in ransom money to release two ships. They are believed to have been paid a record $9.5m (£5.8m) for Samho Dream, a South Korean oil tanker, and nearly $2.8m (£1.7m) for the Golden Blessing, a Singaporean flagged ship. “We are now counting our cash,” a pirate who gave his name as Hussein told Reuters news agency.

[From BBC News – Somali pirates receive record ransom for ships’ release]

I’ll bet they are. And It will take them a while. Once again, these marine miscreants aren’t looking for prepaid mobile phones, gift cards or PayPal accounts: they are after cash, and I’ll lay a pound to a penny that they didn’t want Yuan or Roubles or Kenyan Shillings and an M-PESA account in a false name: they wanted dollars, and in $100 bills. The cash was dropped from a helicopter on to the ship. Wait a minute, you might be tempted to think: how on Earth can people move millions of dollars in cash around when we have stringent KYC/AML/CTF legislation in place! I think I may have found the answer. They are criminals, and therefore don’t care about such restrictions. There’s an amazing story in one of the free newspapers you get on the tube (Metro, 20th June 2011).

Three Britons accused or smuggling more than £2m into Somalia to pay pirate ransoms. They were given sentences of between TEN AND 15 YEARS (my emphasis) and also fined £9,000.

That £9,000 fine must have strung. This is, apparently, the first time that “westerners” have been sentenced for their involvement in ransom payments. Hhhmmm. Interesting. Now what were they smuggling into Somalia again? Was it mobile handsets for illicit m-payments? No. Prepaid cards to be used for nefarious purposes? No. Bitcoin wallets on encrypted USB drives? No. It was cash. Of course it’s quite inconvenient to have to ship huge wads of $100 bills around, so perhaps the pirates had asked for euros instead. It could do with the support at the moment. If the Feds decide to start issuing $500, or $1000, bills anytime soon, the euro would be devastated, since almost half of the euros out there are in the form of €500 notes and if drug dealers, money launderers, kidnappers and corrupt politicians decide to dump them for dollars the demand would collapse (nobody uses them in legitimate transactions).

Malaysian police have arrested a Lebanese man allegedly carrying fake currency with a face value of $66 million after he tipped a hotel staff with a $500 note, an official said Friday. The largest U.S. note currently in wide circulation is a $100 bill. But police found bundles of $1 million, $100,000 and $500 notes in the man’s hotel room in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, said Izany Abdul Ghany, head of the city’s commercial crime unit.

[From $500 Tip Leads Police to $66 Million in Fake Bills – ABC News]

Cash does seem to attract the wrong kind of person. There has to be a better way.

Elizabeth Buse, group president, Visa, responsible for Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa said that bringing transactions out of cash into electronic forms will allow governments to have better tax compliance and greater monitoring of fraudulent transaction and money laundering.

[From Electronic payments can control black money]

There’s an interesting experiment in this line of thinking underway right now, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is attempting to restrict the role of the cash in the economy there and push for a more efficient less-cash system.

To be precise, the CBN on April 20 sent a circular to all banks, Cash-in-Transit (CIT) operating firms, payments system service providers, limiting daily cash withdrawals to N150,000 for individuals and N1 million for corporate entities effective June 1, 2012.

[From From cash to cashless economy: How practicable is CBN’s mop up policy?]

There’s been a storm of complaint about this from various elements in Nigerian society. I assume that some of these complaints come from people who are happy with the corruption and tax evasion that cash delivers, but there are also reasoned complaints that the electronic infrastructure is insufficient.

On May 17, the House of Representatives objected to the proposal by the CBN & requested the CBN to suspend the implementation of the policy. They argue that that the country was not prepared for such a change

[From Nigerian Cash Management Reform — Counting On Currency]

I hope the CBN stays the course, and not just because of economic efficiency. Cash discriminates in favour of the tax-evading, corrupt elites at the expense of the powerless and poor: electronic payments should be a cheap, fast and transparent alternative.

The biggest enemy in fighting poverty is physical cash. The fact that people living at the bottom end of the pyramid need to conduct their business with paper notes (and coins) is the main reason why they are often stuck there.

[From Mobile Banking: Nigeria and cash]

But how can an emerging market make the transition from cash to cashless? The answer is, of course, to skip past the slow roll-out of conventional banking and payments infrastructure and use mobiles, not cards, to replace cash. Kenya points the way…

Over 13,000 sugarcane cutters in Mumias Sugar zone will start receiving their pay electronically following a deal between Mumias Sugar Company, Family Bank and mobile phone money transfer service providers. Acting harvesting and transport manager Mr Franklin Maguge said the firm was considering the possibility of extending the programme to cover other casual workers in the next one month… The services will be also extended to cover sugarcane cutters National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) medical scheme monthly remittances to make it easy for them to pay without going through hectic process.

[From 13,000 Sugarcane workers to get paid via phones. « Mobile Money Africa]

This story gets even more interesting, though.

The sugar milling firm in collaboration with Safaricom and Airtel mobile phone services providers and Family bank is also making arrangements to have the cutters provided with mobile phones at a subsidised loan for efficient running of the programme.

[From 13,000 Sugarcane workers to get paid via phones. « Mobile Money Africa]

Providing subsidised loans to the workers who do not have phones presumably saves money compared to paying them in cash. So if some of the workers still insist of getting paid in cash, great ineffeciencies remain for the company. When few enough remain, the company than quite reasonably insist that they are paid by mobile (I can remember my first factory job when I was a teenager, when the company was going through the process of switching the workers from cash to direct deposit – it wasn’t instantaneous, but it was done in the end). Come on mateys, all aboard for lack-of-Treasure Island.

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]