MANY readers will already have experienced situations where they are unable to pay for things in cash and have to use a valid credit or debit card. Car parking is only one such transaction where having a card is almost obligatory these days, most supermarkets are changing their checkouts to cashless machines — and the new Amazon grocery shops don’t take cash at all. Many of us are now mostly shopping online and credit and debit cards are obligatory.

Even our relationship with government agencies and local authorities is now almost impossible without access to a computer and a credit card.  What’s wrong with that, you might ask? If you’ve got a good credit rating and bank account, you may prefer the idea of paying by card — it’s simple and painless and you don’t have to carry a wad of cash and small change in your pocket.

We see headlines in the press, like “Customers move towards digital payments” and “Banks shutting down ATMs as people move towards digital payments” — as if everyone is just collectively acting like this, and the big institutions are just following our lead.

In fact the opposite is true: there’s been a huge amount of top-down pushing against the the use of hard currency. A cashless system is not meant for our convenience: we live in a capitalist society in which the capitalists aim to squeeze as much profit out of us as possible — and that’s so much easier with cashless transactions.

People tend to spend more when using credit cards than they would with cash, as they have less oversight and control over their spending. One of the things that Visa will actively market to businesses is that people will spend more when they use digital money — up to 25 per cent more. So in terms of the overarching capitalist modus vivendi, there is more profit accumulation.

The collaboration between big technology and big finance requires “cloudmoney” — digital money underpinned by the banking sector to replace physical cash. Cloudmoney is taking us to the front lines of a war for our wallets, but it also impacts on our freedom.

What is most frightening about a cashless society is that we make ourselves completely transparent. Those trying to sell us things can see right through us and into our minds.

Every transaction we make and every Google search we undertake is recorded in a data bank. This data enables sellers to target us with focused advertising, to tempt us, to recognise our weaknesses — perhaps for gambling or lavish holidays.

The data collectors know where we live, if we have children and roughly what age they are, they know how often we go to the cinema or theatre, where we travel (from our credit card petrol, train and hotel bills), how often we buy alcohol, what sort we buy and so on.

We are no longer individuals with private lives but a collection of algorithms and statistics to be exploited. The possible extension of this mass surveillance (because that is what it is) is that we could even be denied access to various services.

We might wish to buy a train ticket to take part in a demonstration. Our political views will already be well known from our social media messages which are also tied in with our purchasing histories.

Based on our electronic history, the ticket-selling company might deduce that we are planning to join the demonstration and refuse to sell us a ticket.

We are being told that the move to a cashless society is natural and inevitable, but it is the work of powerful interests. It is becoming one of the great battles of our time: over the ownership of the digital footprints that make up our lives.

Beneath the surface of the global financial system, there has been a long-established lobbying campaign, an alliance of partners waging a covert war on cash.

Brett Scott, in his groundbreaking book Cloudmoney, has explained the technical, political, and cultural differences between various forms of money and shows how the cash system has been under attack for decades, as banking and tech companies promote a cashless society under the banner of progress.

So who benefits from a cashless society — and who gets left behind? Those without a good credit rating and access to credit cards become second-class citizens, denied access to services and goods. Even for those with a credit card, if the cash machine malfunctions or refuses your card, there is nothing you can do but rant and rave.

It is worrying, how we are sleepwalking into a dystopian future. Few of us are aware of this tectonic shift taking place in the financial world which affects us all. We think of the overarching global financial systems, if at all, as having little to do with our daily lives.

Today, the global financial system functions rather like our own central nervous system; it controls our daily lives within society, just as our nervous system controls our bodies.

All economies are, in essence, the sum of our transactional interrelationships with others: human beings applying themselves to their daily tasks, making and trading things.

What units of the monetary system are doing is activating people, making it possible for our complex societies to function. By financing big projects, financial institutions are activating thousands of workers, but it is those workers who create value.

The financial sector only facilitates human activity. Let’s be clear, the move away from cash is far more in the interests of large tech and finance companies than of ordinary people.

Increasingly, the trajectory of corporate capitalism is that big tech and big finance are fusing. All the big players are saying they can’t operate unless they are fused with transnational digital finance infrastructures. Under capitalism, you aim to maximise profit, so your overarching impulse will be to accelerate interconnection.

Cash is antithetical to that. Cash is a thing that slows things down and creates friction. For many, when they are asked in surveys why they prefer cash, there’s a hierarchy of reasons.

One of the immediate ones is that one knows when a transaction is done, and another is for budgeting purposes. There is a correlation between the use of cash and income levels.

Cash slows down spending. And for people who are already on low incomes, this is important — they know how much they have and can avoid getting into debt.

This is one of the things that’s going on underneath the surface if you think about gentrification. Gentrified places are the ones that tend to be cashless. If you have easy access to credit, you’re viewed as a high-status member of society.

If you’re not in that demographic, you’re more likely to use cash. This imposes an even more insidious two-tier system on society. There is little profit to be made from those who don’t have much to start with.