Thailand on its way to being cashless society

I wish I could say that I was excited about this but I just don't have enough faith in banks and the government to not use this information for their own benefit or at the least, to sell your spending patterns to advertisers to invade other parts of your life in every single application that you use. Data and customer information is a very big business these days and this is how companies like Google make tons of money.

I can agree that it is a lot easier to pay with your phone and not with cash, plus it is a lot easier for a scammer to use if they find your phone since chances are they can't open it anyway. If someone finds your credit/bank card on the other hand, they can use this just about anywhere because nobody ever looks at the names or signatures on those things anymore.

src

I have this sort of things on my phone as well, but I use it sparingly. I'm one of those people that is quite concerned about my personal information getting out there even if it is something so innocuous as "this guy buys a lot of cheese." I value my privacy, so I almost never use the QR scanners.... but it does seem like almost everyone else does.

The other day I was in line to buy a coffee at a place I had never been to before and when I already had my coffee in my hand and had my cash in hand to pay for it they informed me that they don't accept cash. My response was "well you are going to, because I don't have any QR or credit cards." Eventually what they did was that one of the staff members took the cash and then QR paid for my coffee themselves. I don't mean to be a pain in the ass and I wasn't trying to make some sort of a protest statement here either. If there had been a sign at the front of the shop that said "no cash accepted!" I would have turned around and went somewhere else.

I just don't like that we are heading towards some sort of futuristic something or other where your ability to buy things can just get shut down by someone.. I don't know who that someone would be but we've seen things like this in movies as well as in real life situations where if someone is under investigation the government just cuts off all their access to funds. It is difficult to cut someone off from their access to cash they already have and even though I really hate coins (I have a massive accumulation of 1 and 2 baht coins at home) I would rather deal with that than have to involve my phone with everything that I do.

Another thing that people frequently do is that they will loan or give a friend money by using a bank transfer in a similar fashion and yes, this is more convenient than one of you giving them money out of your wallet but now the banks or whoever else is watching now knows that the two of you are connected to one another in some sort of capacity. I can't really think of any way that this could be used against you but I also don't believe in the adage of "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

I feel like this is much more dangerous version of kind of what FB does where it lets people see who all of your friends are in your friend's list. I have been infiltrated by scammers contacting me on FB so many times claiming to be a friend of such and such person and eventually it boils down to them needing to borrow a bit of money.

Or another situation could be that one of your friends that you have done a QR transfer with does something illegal and now they dig up their bank records and now you are potentially involved as a collaborator even though you didn't actually do anything wrong.

Perhaps I am dreaming up some rather crazy situations in my mind but I just really don't think that this sort of thing is being done simply to make our lives easier. When has a financial institution EVER done something simply to make people's lives easier? They are in the business of making money, not in helping people in a charitable way.

src

I do also find it concerning that reporters and the banks themselves are writing articles that praise the ease of use of cashless apps. Again, banks have never been in the business of helping people in a charitable fashion, there is some sort of ulterior motive going on here.

While most of the people I know are falling in line and loving how much easier it makes their lives I am one of those people that unless I absolutely must, I will use cash for almost anything I purchase.

If you are enjoying the benefits of QR oriented cashless payments and think I am a nutter for thinking their could be something evil behind all of this all I can say is "I genuinely hope you are correct." But I also ask you to remember a time when we all thought that Facebook was just a fun app that was trying to help you reconnect you with your family and friends! But it turned out that they were collecting data on you and selling it to the highest bidder.