By Gemma Simpson
Tuesday, March 13 2007 02:45 PM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,61995984,00.htm

Cash is going to stick around for a long time to come, according to industry watchers--despite claims from payments giant Visa that notes and coins are on the way out.

Peter Ayliffe, chief executive of Visa Europe, said in an interview with The Independent on Sunday that by 2012 using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.

And he said some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash because of the greater cost of processing these payments.

But a spokesman from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) disagreed: "We don't foresee it [a cashless society] in the immediate time period. Cash is still very popular as a method of payment for a great many people."

Cash represents a very substantial part of total revenue for retailers--the second biggest after debit cards--and the BRC spokesman said: "I can't see that changing a huge amount in the very near future."

Research from the UK's payments association Apacs predicts, by 2015, less than half of all worldwide payments will be by cash, with three-fifths of current payments using notes and coins.

A spokeswoman from Apacs said predictions about future payments methods are "crystal ball gazing" because it's not known how the public will take to such new technologies.

Visa launched a mobile platform that it said will "lay the foundation" for the commercial deployment of contactless mobile payments and near-field communications (NFC) services around the world last month.

Gemma Simpson of Silicon.com reported from London.