Cash is cringe-worthy but let's not judge people's preferences

Electronic payments are taking over but paper money has its uses

- ALLISON SCHRAGER

A friend once complained to me that people would sigh and roll their eyes when she used a credit card to pay for her $3 coffee. This was about a decade ago, and I admit, at the time I silently judged her.

What kind of psychopath, I thought to myself, forces everyone in line to wait for their coffee while her credit card transaction is approved?

How times have changed, and I'm not talking about that $3 coffee. Today I feel that same impatience when someone ahead of me rummages through their wallet to find exact change to make a cash purchase. Electronic payments are much faster and have become the norm, even for small purchases.

Now it is cash that carries a social stigma—as a survey [by Cash App, a digital wallet popular in the US] of Generation Z consumers makes clear.

Conducted in September, it finds that 53% use physical cash only as a last resort and 29% believe that people who pay with cash are “cringe.”