Meanwhile when a new iPhone comes out you can be sure that ApplePay will work. It's hard for physical money to remain competitive in the 21st century.
An example of a side effects of cashless is that 3%-6% of profit from market stalls at a fair go to credit card companies and payment intermediaries. Bit weird that Visa and Square get a cut of me purchasing some local farmers honey directly from the farmer. But they have to use them else they'd miss out on sales.
Bit of a hassle to walk to the ATM sometimes, but it’s worth it.
We can decide to just not allow the cut to be so high. It's possible to set a limit. Visa makes a bunch of money because they don't need 3% to cover infra + fraud.
The farmers market vendors accept payments because consumers expect it, and consumers expect it because it's a great service.
It's weird because it means they have their fingers in the pockets of even tiny local interactions like that. Vendors love having easy payments sure, but I've yet to meet a vendor happy about losing 3%+ of their margins because consumers expect it.
(And yet people say it's a collectivist society.)
They already introduced new designs of the old denominations that required cash machines to be updated for, so it’s doable.