A payments system without cash is one dependent on banks that are prone to financial crises, systems failure, and cyberattacks. The digital chips promise you government-issued dollar bills, and that promise is empty if you can't get those from the ATM. Despite how crucial it is to maintain an inclusive, multimodal payments system with nonbank and non-digital options, our payments system is being driven toward a monoculture. Ads for digital payments don't say, "Enjoy the speed, convenience, surveillance, cyber-hacking, exclusion, and critical infrastructure weaknesses that our platform brings," yet that is what lies beneath the surface-level slickness of digital payments. The world's most vulnerable people rely on the already existing, physical cash system, and our priority should be to protect that system.

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