On June 27, the ATM turns 50. Former U.S Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker once described it as the "only useful innovation in banking". But today, the cash that ATM's dispenses may be on the endangered list.

   Cash is being displaced in so many ways, and as digital alternatives emerge and develop, quite a few people predict that cash will be replaced by the alternatives. Nevertheless, I expect that cash will remain with us forever. The future will be "less cash", rather than cashless.

   Some people who support cashless future take into account the high cost of using cash. Reliance on cash is quite uneven among the group across the world. A research shows the poor and those with less access to institutions bear the disproportionate share of these costs of using cash. In the U.S, for example, cash usage imposes the regressive tax on computers, with the highest impact on people who do not have an account with a bank. Additionally, the poor also have to spend more time getting cash. Americans spend 28 minutes traveling to get cash every month, but that time isn't evenly distributed. People who never use bank spend five minutes longer to get cash at other places. And unemployed people spend nearly 9 minutes more. In spite of the high cost of using cash, it cannot lead cash to disappear totally in the future. There is just one possibility that cash will likely become less popular.

  Is there a world without cash?Sweden, already high on the cashless scale, may become the first country to come close to a truly cashless state. In the 1960s, Sweden's bank had already promoted cash alternatives with digital transfers used to pay wages. The app, Swish, developed by the major banks, is widely used today for nearly half the population. However, there are a few individuals still using cash. For that reason there isn't a world without cash.

  In China today, the appearance of digital alternatives, such as Alipay, WeChat pay, indeed leads our society to follow the path of less cash. But there is no denying that lots of fields are still using only in cash. Cash is unique among payment instruments in that anyone can transact, any time, any place with no third parties involved. With this freedom comes strong privacy protection. No matter what extent alternatives develop, cash is also considered more convenient and versatile. As Bhaskar Chakracorti said, "Though cash may become less popular, rest assured that there will always be someone who still stop you in the street asking for directions to the nearest ATM."