tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/50th-anniversary-of-atm-39872/articles50th anniversary of ATM – The Conversation2017-06-26T21:20:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/797352017-06-26T21:20:10Z2017-06-26T21:20:10ZWhy a ‘cashless’ society would hurt the poor: A lesson from India<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175498/original/file-20170625-13450-p7gx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A bank official counts discontinued rupee notes. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/ Anupam Nath</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>India <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/narendra-modi-prime-minister-address-to-the-nation4364609/">recently tried</a> to reduce the use of cash in its economy by eliminating, overnight, two of its most widely used bills in what was called demonetization.</p>
<p>While the effort – initially explained as an attempt to curb “black money” – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/world/asia/in-its-third-month-indias-cash-shortage-begins-to-bite.html?_r=0">has been a failure in many respects</a>, it was part of an ongoing and <a href="http://theconversation.com/cash-is-falling-out-of-fashion-will-it-disappear-forever-79316">global push toward cashlessness</a>. </p>
<p>What India and other governments have failed to contend with, however, is the adverse effect such severe policies have on the poor, who seldom use banks.</p>
<p>India’s working poor rely almost exclusively on cash, with <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/765851467037506667/pdf/106633-WP-PUBLIC-Innovative-Solutions-Accelerate-Adoption-Electronic-Payments-Merchants-report-2016.pdf">about 97 percent of all transactions</a> involving an exchange of rupees. With 93 percent of the country working in informal off-the-books jobs, most transactions entail personalized relationships rather than standardized forms of legal contract or corporate institutions. </p>
<p>My own research on the persistence of Delhi’s informal recycling economy shows just how important cash is to low-income laborers. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175495/original/file-20170625-13435-1bq94lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indians stand in a queue outside a bank to withdraw cash in Ahmadabad, India, in December.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ajit Solanki</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How Delhi’s informal recycling economy works</h2>
<p>For the past few years, my work has focused on informal garbage collectors in a northwest Delhi neighborhood who collect garbage for middle-class residents across the city. </p>
<p>Beyond collecting trash, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/of-poverty-and-plastic-scavenging-and-scrap-trading-entrepreneurs-in-indias-urban-informal-economy/oclc/958715213?referer=di&ht=edition">these workers also constitute</a> the city’s only recycling service by separating out and selling plastics, papers, metal and other valuable scrap – including human hair sold for wigs and stale bread used for cow feed. The money they earn from selling these materials is how they support their families. </p>
<p>While my research focus was to understand how an informal economy like this one persists when confronted with formal government-backed services, I also learned how the exchange of cash between buyers and collectors of scrap helped structure community life by creating durable social bonds that functioned like contracts.</p>
<p>Over 20 months from 2013 to 2015, I interviewed more than 100 garbage collectors, scrap buyers and policymakers and worked alongside collectors on their garbage collection routes, at their homes where they sort and sell the scrap, and at recycling factories.</p>
<p>At the site where I did the bulk of my research, around 100 scrap collectors and their families live in homes constructed from bamboo and plastic sheeting on privately owned land. These structures offer not only shelter, but also space for sorting scrap into about 10 different categories, which their families typically assist with until the scrap can be sold.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175499/original/file-20170625-13438-xstmut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Indian woman sorts reusable and recyclable materials from collected garbage in northeast Delhi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Kornberg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once it’s sorted into sacks, collectors hoist them onto scales, while buyers jot down the weights and multiply them by the going rate to arrive at the price tag. But, collectors usually aren’t paid the total amounts on the spot. Instead, small payments are made for daily expenses, and the rest is noted down as a deposit against the regular advances given to collectors. </p>
<p>In other words, buyers act almost as patrons who are responsible for the basic needs of their dependent laborers. The collectors, in turn, rely on their buyers for cash to meet their daily needs, as well as for larger sums to pay for weddings, medical expenses and, in some cases, to build better houses and purchase farmland back in the village. </p>
<p>This <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002764298041010003">infuses the cash with extra meaning</a> and also requires durable relationships and negotiations to function. Physical currency’s flexibility <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2780903">makes it amenable to negotiation</a> in both timing and amount – a feature that requires more personalized relationships. </p>
<p>Furthermore, scrap buyers themselves get credit to run their businesses in the same way, <a href="http://pages.ucsd.edu/%7Earonatas/conference/Banking_on_each_other.pdf">through informal channels</a> that depend on personal relationships, rather than banks. </p>
<p>A 2015 report noted that just 15 percent of adults worldwide <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/187761468179367706/pdf/WPS7255.pdf">used a bank account to make or receive payments</a> over a 12-month period.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175500/original/file-20170625-16913-1hb2zjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scrap collector shows his account book detailing the stuff he sells and his daily expenses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dana Kornberg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>When cash disappears</h2>
<p>So what happens when 86 percent of a nation’s currency suddenly disappears?</p>
<p>When I returned in December 2016, a month after <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-to-phase-out-current-500-and-1000-rupee-bank-notes-1478619693">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced</a> that all 500 and 1,000 rupee bills would cease to be legal tender, a scrap collector I knew relayed his experience. Just three hours before Modi’s Nov. 8 announcement, Pintu had boarded a train for a 24-hour journey to his village near Calcutta. With him were 11 1,000 rupee notes that his buyer gave him as an advance just before he left. Just as he got on the train, the notes were declared worthless, and he barely managed to buy a single meal for his family along the way. </p>
<p>More importantly, it was very difficult for people like Pintu and even the scrap buyers to get the new 500 and 2,000 rupee bills issued to replace the eliminated notes. The chain had been damaged: With cash in short supply everywhere, scrap buyers couldn’t pay the collectors, who in turn had more trouble supporting their families. Seeing how people were struggling, a buyer rhetorically asked: “Why didn’t the government do more to make sure that poor people would have money?”</p>
<p>While middle-class Indians were able to exchange their currency in banks, the unbanked poor often had to rely on informal lenders who would only exchange the old bills for new ones at predatory rates. Without savings, and with high rates of illiteracy, these laborers have little chance of joining <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/modi-s-goal-of-a-cashless-india-may-be-thwarted-as-digital-drops">Modi’s dream of a cashless, digital economy</a>.</p>
<h2>Take it easy</h2>
<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2017/01/16/cashless-rogoff-india-scandinavia/">Some have argued</a> that a cashless society would help the poor by, for example, reducing crime and making labor practices more transparent. </p>
<p>The United Nations is leading an <a href="https://www.betterthancash.org/about">effort by more than 50 financial companies, foundations and governments</a>, including India, to accelerate the transition from cash to digital payments specifically to “reduce poverty and drive inclusive growth.”</p>
<p>There’s some truth to this, and while cash exchanges can facilitate mutual care and responsibility, the downside to the patron relationship I described above is that cash can facilitate exploitative or predatory practices because of how much control moneylenders and bosses have over laborers. So it may be wise to gradually move some forms of exchange to digital transactions. </p>
<p>But, if such a future exists, it is still a long way off, at least in India. According to a 2014 study, just 10 percent of Indians over 15 <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/%7E/media/Fletcher/Microsites/Cost%20of%20Cash/COC-India-lowres.pdf">had ever made a digital payment</a>. And in countries where a large share of transactions are already done digitally, there’s evidence that this <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/currency-tag/the-high-cost-for-the-poor-of-using-a-bank">does not serve the poor well</a>.</p>
<p>With cashlessness becoming a new economic frontier, the effects of such state-led policies on cash-dependent economies must be considered seriously before they are indiscriminately introduced. My work in India leads me to believe that cash plays an important role in our modern economy, particularly among the poor, and those urging a cashless future should do so with great caution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation and the University of Michigan's Center for the Education of Women and Department of Sociology.
</span></em></p>India’s recent move toward a cash-free society helped reveal just how important physical currency is to the informal economies that the poorest families depend upon.Dana Kornberg, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/793162017-06-26T01:07:48Z2017-06-26T01:07:48ZCash is falling out of fashion – will it disappear forever?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175383/original/file-20170623-29849-1vrzfri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Indian man displays new currency notes of 2,000 Indian rupee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Currency-Overhaul/539af6cac6ab4e828180af56733a722f/11/0">AP Photo/Ajit Solanki</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 27, the <a href="https://www.atmia.com/news/the-atm-turns-50-this-year/4665/">ATM turns 50</a>. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker once described it as the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/a-brief-history-of-the-atm/388547/">only useful innovation in banking</a>.” But today, the cash that ATMs dispense may be on the endangered list. </p>
<p>Cash is being displaced in so many ways that it’s hard to keep track. There are credit cards and electronic payments; apps such as Venmo, PayPal and Square Cash; mobile payments services; cryptocurrencies that operate outside the purview of central banks; and localized offerings such as Kenya’s mPesa, India’s Paytm and Bangladesh’s bKash. These innovations are encouraging cashlessness across communities worldwide. </p>
<p>It’s reasonable to expect cash to follow the path of other goods that have been replaced by digital alternatives, such as photos, music and movies. Will cash – and the ATMs that dispense it – experience a “Blockbuster” moment and disappear from our neighborhoods?</p>
<p>Not so fast. Cash will likely become less popular, thanks to the high cost of using cash and the growing array of alternatives. But I expect it will remain with us forever. The future will be “less cash,” rather than cashless.</p>
<h1>The cost of cash</h1>
<p>As of 2013, approximately <a href="http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/cashlessjourney/">85 percent of the world’s transactions involved cash</a>. </p>
<p>Reliance on cash is quite uneven across the world. While Singapore, the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Switzerland are among <a href="https://www.raconteur.net/technology/the-decline-of-cash">the least cash-reliant countries</a>, in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Peru and Egypt, only 1 percent of transactions are cashless. Even some highly advanced countries, such as Japan, are still highly reliant on cash. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pymnts.com/amazon-entertainment/2017/united-states-cash-usage/">Cash usage in the U.S. is still high</a> relative to EU countries. In 2015, cash usage in the U.S. represented 13.1 percent of its GDP, whereas it represented just 7.1 percent in France and 4.5 percent in Switzerland.</p>
<p>Concerns about social equity offer one motivation for lawmakers to push for cashless alternatives. My colleague <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CEME/about/People/bios/mazzotta">Benjamin Mazzotta</a> and I have studied the <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/InclusionInc/Programming/Research/Cost-of-Cash">costs of cash across a wide range of countries</a>, with a particular focus on the U.S., Mexico, Egypt and India. Our <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-countries-that-would-profit-most-from-a-cashless-world">research</a> shows that the poor and those with less access to institutions bear a disproportionate share of these costs of using cash. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175235/original/file-20170622-11964-31r0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Check cashing institutions are well known for their convenience, despite their fees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dopey/8351282267/">Doran/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the U.S., for example, cash usage imposes a regressive tax on consumers, with the highest impact on people who do not have an account with a bank. <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CostofCash/%7E/media/Fletcher/Microsites/Cost%20of%20Cash/CostofCashStudyFinal.pdf">We found</a> that the unbanked pay four times more in fees to access their money than those with bank accounts. They also pay US$4 higher fees per month for cash access on average than those with formal financial services. Such fees include those charged for payday lending, buy-here-pay-here auto loans and check cashing. The unbanked have a five times higher risk of paying cash access fees on payroll and EBT cards.<br>
Poorer consumers also have to spend far more time getting cash. On average, Americans spend 28 minutes a month traveling to get cash, but that time isn’t evenly distributed. People who don’t use a bank spend about five minutes longer getting to the place where they can get cash, and unemployed people spent nearly nine minutes more.</p>
<p>In the meantime, other scholars have argued for the benefits of a “less cash” society. <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10798.html">Ken Rogoff at Harvard</a> has argued that eliminating higher-denomination banknotes can prevent currency from being used to fund illegal activities. </p>
<h1>A world without cash</h1>
<p>A combination of public and private initiatives are currently chipping away at the global predominance of cash, with some countries moving more quickly than others. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/04/sweden-cashless-society-cards-phone-apps-leading-europe">Sweden</a>, already high on the cashlessness scale, may become the first country to come close to a truly cashless state. Sweden’s history in banks promoting cash alternatives dates back to the 1960s, with digital bank transfers used to pay wages. Cards also become more popular in the 1990s, when banks also started charging a fee for checks. The app, Swish, developed by the major banks, is widely used today for digital money transfers by nearly half the population. Many businesses discourage use of cash, and retailers are legally allowed to refuse cash. </p>
<p>In several other countries, governments are experimenting with innovative digital alternatives. In 2012, the Royal Canadian Mint launched <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/mintchip-nanopay-1.3402059">the MintChip</a> project, recently handed over to the private sector. The plan is to store cash on computer chips, enabling the transfer of money between chips through encrypted messages. </p>
<p>In some countries, the private sector has led the way, creating “less cash” societies in the unlikeliest of places. Consider Somaliland, one of the poorest countries in the world. It stands at the forefront of a mobile payment revolution with <a href="https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Telesom-Somaliland.pdf">its ZAAD platform</a>. At over 30 mobile payment transactions a month on average, the average citizen of Somaliland is far ahead of the rest of the world’s average of 8.5 such transactions per capita per month. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175237/original/file-20170622-12039-dhd5zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In India, thousands of people waited in bank lines to exchange their old money for the new denominations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps the most dramatic nudge toward “less cash” was experienced recently in India. Last November, the Indian government made a high-risk, high-stakes move by demonetizing the 500 and 1,000 rupee banknotes, in effect <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/03/early-lessons-from-indias-demonetization-experiment">voiding 86 percent of cash in circulation</a>. Their initial aim was to root out corruption and illegal activity funded by cash. New 500 and 2,000 rupee banknotes were issued, so consumers had to go to a bank and exchange their demonetized currency.</p>
<p>In a country that is <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/%7E/media/Fletcher/Microsites/Cost%20of%20Cash/COC-India-lowres.pdf">almost 90 percent reliant on cash</a>, this move led to disrupted enterprises, unpaid wages and long lines at banks. Mobile wallet players were the unqualified winners of the decision, with market leader Paytm claiming <a href="http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-435-spike-in-paytm-traffic-after-government-scraps-rs-500-rs-1000-notes-2271904">a 435 percent increase in traffic and a 250 percent increase in overall transactions and transaction value</a>.</p>
<p>However, despite the surge in mobile payments after demonetization, cash in India remains resilient. In March, five months after demonetization, <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/post-demonetisation-cash-use-back-in-vogue-despite-e-payment-push/story-K9MPFmMKcm1YrbrjDSJFuK.html">cash withdrawals</a> were actually 0.6 percent higher than a year earlier. </p>
<h1>The future of cash</h1>
<p>What explains the resilience of cash, despite its costs and a growing array of alternatives? </p>
<p>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. Currency neither knows nor cares who holds it or when and where a transaction occurred. People have a visceral sense of security when they have cash with them. Much of this sentiment was uncovered in our <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/InclusionInc/Programming/Research/Cost-of-Cash">Cost of Cash studies</a> spanning multiple countries. </p>
<p>These thresholds will, of course, evolve as our societies become more digitally native. However, old habits and perceptions take a long time to turn over. Some merchants will resist the costs of new equipment or fees that accompany cash alternatives. Cash is also <a href="http://fletcher.tufts.edu/InclusionInc/Programming/Research/Cost-of-Cash">considered more convenient and versatile</a>, while with digital transactions there’s always concerns about hacking and fraud.</p>
<p>So, no matter where we are in the world, let us celebrate the ATM’s half-century of service. The human connection with cash will be hard to break. Though cash may become less popular, rest assured that there will always be someone who will stop you in the street asking for directions to the nearest ATM.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bhaskar Chakravorti receives funding from Mastercard. He is affiliated with Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. </span></em></p>You can now pay your way with apps, cryptocurrencies and other digital alternatives. Physical money might one day look like a relic of the past.Bhaskar Chakravorti, Senior Associate Dean, International Business & Finance, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/791672017-06-22T00:53:44Z2017-06-22T00:53:44ZWhy cash remains sacred in American churches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175055/original/file-20170621-28012-1gf3ox9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why do people need cash in churches?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/321832703?src=G663t1caiCrlZO_Su40SzQ-1-19&size=huge_jpg">Billion Photos/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2017 it was 50 years since the first automated cash dispenser – which came to be known as an automated teller machine (ATM) – was <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atm-dead-long-live-atm-180953838/">inaugurated in London</a>.</p>
<p>Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. I belong to the generation who stood 45 minutes to an hour to deposit or cash checks in the pre-ATM era. I remember getting yelled at for taking my bicycle through the drive-up line at the National Bank of Detroit to avoid the much longer line inside. It did not take me very long to become an early adopter of the magical cards and 24-hour banking.</p>
<p>Later, in my work as a historian of American religion, I extensively studied the role money has played in religious life. In my book, <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469614755/in-pursuit-of-the-almightys-dollar-/?title_id=1321">“In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism,”</a> I retold the American history of the nation’s largest religious stream in terms of the search for money to pay for religious ministries and the purposes for which churches spent the money they collected. </p>
<p>So, what impact did ATMs have on church life? </p>
<h2>Giving to the church</h2>
<p>Fundamentally, the legal separation of church and state in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States did more than simply assure freedom of religion – it <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/261932">privatized what until then in Europe had been a public good</a> and provided funding under the auspices of the state. In the U.S., religious leaders and their ministries had to increasingly depend on voluntary donations and to appeal ever more strenuously for those gifts.</p>
<p>Over the 19th century, various <a href="http://152.2.156.55/browse/book_detail?title_id=1321">church support schemes were tried and abandoned</a>. What in Europe had been a discreet offering with alms boxes kept at the back of the church (alms for the poor) became a central ritual activity in America. In most American weekly church services, offering plates were passed around to finance all of church activities. As giving became very public, one of the features of the weekly offering was, of course, that all gathered could see who was giving, if not how much.</p>
<p>Once the age of plastic money arrived, all of this ritual and financial necessity in American churches was jeopardized. ATMs began appearing in churches, providing a way for people to come up with the ready cash to give to God and their church.</p>
<h2>Nature of money</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175057/original/file-20170621-16553-xdzhzh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There are social and moral dimensions to money.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/662755393?src=G663t1caiCrlZO_Su40SzQ-1-95&size=medium_jpg">Andrei Korzhyts</a></span>
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<p>So, why did people need cash in the first place? To answer this question, it is important to first understand the nature of cash in context of religious life.</p>
<p>The German sociologist <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Philosophy_of_Money.html?id=qMUOAAAAQAAJ">Georges Simmel</a> famously noted that the essential, almost magical quality of money is that it is fungible – that is, it is exchangeable or replaceable. Individuals can use the same US$100 to buy drugs, feed a frugal family for a week, buy a designer scarf or give it to God in an offering plate.</p>
<p>Indeed, as we know only too well, money is a universal currency to purchase things of incommensurate worth. However, as sociologist <a href="https://sociology.princeton.edu/faculty/viviana-a-zelizer">Viviana Zelizer</a> explains in her memorable book, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/11007.html">“The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies,”</a> not all money is the same – there are social and moral dimensions to money that are frankly surprising. </p>
<p>To illustrate, Zelizer narrates the striking example of Marty, a 1950s Philadelphia gang member who would donate to the church only the 25 cents that he got from his mother – not money from robberies. When asked, Marty provided a clear distinction between different sets of money. He said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Oh, no, that is bad money; that is not honest money.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the money he got from his mother was earned through hard work so “he could offer it to God.” Marty is the kind of person who, when asked, “Who would know? would reply, "God would.” The point is, not all dollars are equal – individuals have some strong ideas about clean and dirty money, or just appropriate and inappropriate money. </p>
<p>Here is where ATMs come into the story.</p>
<h2>Donations in the age of ATMs</h2>
<p>Automated teller machines started to make their first appearance in the lobbies of evangelical churches just over a dozen years ago. It was important for churches to have something to put into the collection plate, and it was important that it be cash that people actually possessed – not a promise to pay someday on their credit card accounts. Thus, the ATM allowed evangelicals who didn’t carry a checkbook or a wallet full of cash not to be embarrassed when the offering plates or baskets came around.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/175058/original/file-20170621-19084-zturz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">ATMs began to appear in churches to increase donations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mjhagen/8287097576/in/photolist-dCixoG-46X9y8-9U5FA-5qM2f-8xzWuA-oUNNRg-8Sxz2-73nk5q-975jzu-e3aUyR-6kNLVp-61r1ye-6s7dug-nj9S29-61vcuQ-78zMZr-ASzRp-61r1Lp-94FqsJ-5eCsec-9MAng4-7ELYDn-boosbP-7f3GEa-6Qh1c7-cP1Xqm-5C7CCZ-8Re2W-dBguZ2-8UbLWY-LBU9T-D7A8E-bCk6dK-4GuB13-9gN8qg-3zvSkU-2cPyQe-8NjnnK-2oTB-FX1iht-aveRtt-UbmN3D-dWfyiV-r2ouJ-ou2NbV-5R8ew9-VFsEqQ-F2KyCp-bptTJH-4hVnhM">Mingo Hagen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marty Baker, pastor of the Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, Georgia, was widely credited as the first to install two ATMs in the church lobby in 2005. The first year the donations produced $100,000. They more than doubled by the next year to more than $200,000. He was so successful in increasing giving by making cash available (up 18 percent over pre-ATM machine levels) that he took it one step further, by introducing the <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2007/september-online-only/atms-automatic-tithing-machines.html">“automatic tithing machine”</a> that took cash out of the giver’s account and deposited it directly into the church’s coffers. This new ATM was beginning to virtualize the all-important collection. Some users responded by placing their receipts in the plate at the appropriate time in the service. </p>
<p>The tithe, of course, refers to the tenth of one’s income conservative Protestants are largely taught to pay to the church in gratitude for what God has done. It is a sacred obligation, and the <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/vg-may11.html">cash money is a serious matter</a>.</p>
<p>There are two interesting dimensions of this appearance of ATMs and churches to consider. One is the strong affinity between cash and conservative evangelicals. For many evangelicals debt is a form of bondage – a message conveyed through conservative radio financial guru Dave Ramsey’s <a href="https://www.daveramsey.com/fpu">Financial Peace University</a> to tens of millions of his followers on AM radio each week in his call-in programs. Ramsey teaches how to “dump debt, budget, build wealth and give like never before!” The building of wealth is a corollary to eschewing debt and it makes Christians free, in Ramsey’s view to be godly. </p>
<p>The point is, <a href="http://complementarycurrency.org/ccLibrary/Belk_Wallendorf_1990_the%20sacred%20meanings%20of%20money.PDF">money isn’t just a fungible means to various ends, it is sacred</a> to these believers.</p>
<h2>In cash we trust</h2>
<p>The second dimension for consideration in the appearance of ATMs in the lobbies of evangelical churches is that they signaled something by their very presence: America was in fact becoming a cashless society. The debit card that people carried in their wallet could be just as good as cash anywhere else, but in the sanctuary, cash was the appropriate offering.</p>
<p>So as in the ancient world where <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/money-changers">Jews from all over the world exchanged their secular coins</a> in the Court of the Gentiles in Jerusalem’s Second Temple for coins with no image on them that they could use inside to make various offerings and purchase sacrifices, today’s believers also needed to make an exchange.</p>
<p>Those ancient believers were obeying the Second Commandment (“Thou shalt make no graven images,” Exodus 20:4–6). American Christians were, by contrast, partial to greenbacks with the words, “In God We Trust” on them. </p>
<p>Who would’ve guessed 50 years ago when the automatic teller machine was invented that this modern human financial interface would also play a part in the interface between human beings and their God? </p>
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<p><a href="https://www.ats.edu/">Vanderbilt Divinity School is a member of the Association of Theological Schools</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hudnut-Beumler received funding for the original research for his book, In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar, from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., a private family foundation in Indianapolis, Indiana.</span></em></p>ATMs began appearing in churches providing a way for people to come up with ready cash to give to God and their church. But why was cash necessary?James Hudnut-Beumler, Professor of American Religious History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/796242017-06-21T10:31:20Z2017-06-21T10:31:20ZATMs dispense more than money: The dirt and dope that’s on your cash<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174581/original/file-20170619-9968-kqwa92.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Those keypads are teeming with microbes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/London-Olympics-Cash-Crunch/0951e8f6f7fb4459a1ff2a02f1716c24/15/0">AP Photo/Charlie Riedel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We live in a dirty world. Wherever we go, we are among microbes. Bacteria, fungi and viruses live on our phones, bus seats, door handles and park benches. We pass these tiny organisms to each other when we share a handshake or a seat on the plane.</p>
<p>Now, researchers are finding we also share our microbes through our money. From tip jars to vending machines to the meter maid – each dollar, passed person to person, samples a bit of the environment it comes from, and passes those bits to the next person, the next place it goes. </p>
<p><a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175527">The list of things</a> found on our dollars includes DNA from our pets, traces of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jat/article/20/4/213/838490/Cocaine-Contamination-of-United-States-Paper">drugs</a>, and bacteria and viruses that cause disease. </p>
<p>The findings demonstrate how money can silently record human activities, leaving behind so-called “molecular echoes.”</p>
<h1>What’s on a dollar bill?</h1>
<p><a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175527">In 2017, a study</a> identified over a hundred different strains of bacteria on dollar bills circulating in New York City. Some of the most common bugs on our bills included <em>Propionibacterium acnes</em>, a bacteria known to cause acne, and <em>Streptococcus oralis</em>, a common bacteria found in our mouths. </p>
<p>The research team, led by biologist Jane Carlton at New York University, also discovered traces of DNA from domestic animals and from specific bacteria that are associated only with certain foods.</p>
<p>A similar <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112336/">study</a> recovered traces of DNA on ATM keypads, reflecting the foods people ate in different neighborhoods. People in central Harlem ate more domestic chicken than those in Flushing and Chinatown, who ate more species of bony fish and mollusks. The foods people ate transferred from fingers to touchscreens, where scientists could recover a bit of their most recent meals. </p>
<p>We don’t leave only food behind. Traces of cocaine can be found on almost <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jat/article/20/4/213/838490/Cocaine-Contamination-of-United-States-Paper">80 percent</a> of dollar bills. Other drugs, including morphine, heroin, methamphetamine and amphetamine, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379073801004017">can also be found on bills</a>, though less commonly than cocaine. </p>
<p>Identifying foods people eat or the drugs people use based on interactions with money might not seem all that useful, but scientists are also using these types of data to understand patterns of disease. Most of the microbes the researchers in New York identified do not cause disease. But other studies have suggested that disease-causing strains of bacteria or virus could be <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12597308">passed along with our currency</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174753/original/file-20170620-32355-1a0gy0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Not shown: DNA, drugs, bacteria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6355364425/in/photolist-aFAUqH-95gMni-e7rUxJ-kHcKA-pTwSCL-9AiEUa-644Ln2-9PSLHY-6xhy1c-j2v9DE-9eUfHz-6xhy5R-6xhuF2-6xmG7C-6xhvPX-FW7q9-4szDkt-UkTSWw-adoaPq-8XY1jC-5aXsQ7-TQFoQE-c6RFc1-j2uXQf-pp6DX1-8KTw59-4EfEMf-c6RDuS-6xmHDy-6xmF4o-6xhv3p-5rFMKK-ApTQV-6xhwBD-6xmJ2j-6xmGX1-KzfYi-7RJCa6-6xmJjG-2Z88q2-6V9ka5-mKvdtV-c6REWj-nMan63-aVDiBr-3LvJax-buG23u-5KDexK-bZCPBm-6Viig8">401kcalculator.org</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Bacteria that cause food-borne illness – including <em>Salmonella</em> and a pathogenic strain of <em>E.coli</em> – have been shown to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10419277">survive on pennies, nickels and dimes</a> and can hide out on <a href="http://www.sciencepub.net/nature/ns0909/010_6485ns0909_63_67.pdf">ATM machines</a>. Other bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant <em>Staphylococcus aureus</em> (MRSA) which causes skin infections, are found <a href="https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2047-2994-2-22">on bank notes in the U.S. and Canada</a>, but the extent to which they could spread infections is unknown. </p>
<p>Try as we may to avoid exposure to germs, they travel with us and on us. Even if disease-causing microbes can survive in places like ATMs, the good news is that most exposures don’t make us sick. </p>
<h1>Money laundering</h1>
<p>Disease transmission <a href="http://jfoodprotection.org/doi/abs/10.4315/0362-028X-72.1.202">linked to money is rare</a>, and no major disease outbreaks have started from our ATMs. Although it doesn’t seem common for diseases to transmit through money, there are ways we could make our money cleaner. </p>
<p>Researchers are working on ways to <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie403307y">clean money between transactions</a>. Putting older bills through <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21594239-cleaning-old-bank-notes-carbon-dioxide-better-destroying-them">a machine that exposes them to carbon dioxide</a> at a specific temperature and pressure can strip dollar bills of oils and dirt left behind by human fingers, while the heat kills microbes that would otherwise linger. </p>
<p>U.S. money is still made from <a href="https://www.moneyfactory.gov/hmimpaperandink.html">a blend of cotton and linen</a>, which has been shown to have higher bacterial growth <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/4/4/42/pdf">than plastic polymers</a>. Several countries are transitioning from money made of natural fibers to plastic, which may be less friendly to bacteria. Canada has had plastic money since 2013, and the U.K. transitioned to a plastic-based bank note <a href="http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140108-where-money-is-made-of-plastic">last year</a>. </p>
<p>Even if our money is not directly responsible for spreading disease, we can still use the dollar’s travel history to track how we spread disease in other ways. The website <a href="https://www.wheresgeorge.com/">WheresGeorge.com</a>, created in 1998, lets users track dollar bills by recording their serial numbers. In the almost 20 years since the site’s creation, WheresGeorge has tracked the geographic locations of bills totaling over a billion dollars.</p>
<p>Now, physicists at the Max Planck Institute and University of California, Santa Barbara are using <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7075/full/nature04292.html">data from the WheresGeorge site</a> to <a href="http://rocs.northwestern.edu/research/wgstory.html">track epidemics</a>. Information on human movement and contact rates from WheresGeorge was even used to predict the spread of the <a href="http://rocs.northwestern.edu/projects/swine_flu/">2009 swine flu</a>. </p>
<p>Although we don’t know the extent to which money allows diseases to spread, mom’s advice is probably best when handling cash: Wash your hands and don’t stick it in your mouth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What’s on your cash? Studies show our money carries everything from pet DNA and old food to E.coli and traces of cocaine.Johanna Ohm, Graduate Student in Biology, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788872017-06-20T01:33:20Z2017-06-20T01:33:20ZWhen – and why – did people first start using money?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174541/original/file-20170619-22092-tv9vnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The advantages of coins as currency were clear.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quart_de_shekel_de_la_cité_de_Sidon_en_Phénicie.jpg">cgb </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sometimes you run across a grimy, tattered dollar bill that seems like it’s been around since the beginning of time. Assuredly it hasn’t, but the history of human beings using cash currency does go back a long time – 40,000 years. </p>
<p>Scientists have tracked exchange and trade through the archaeological record, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085416">starting in Upper Paleolithic</a> when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/283522a0">groups of hunters traded</a> for the best flint weapons and other tools. First, people bartered, making direct deals between two parties of desirable objects.</p>
<p>Money came a bit later. Its form has evolved over the millennia – from natural objects to coins to paper to digital versions. But whatever the format, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123127">human beings have long used currency</a> as <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802901">a means of exchange</a>, a method of payment, a standard of value, a store of wealth and a unit of account.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist who’s made discoveries of ancient currency in the field, I’m interested in how money evolved in human civilization – and what these archaeological finds can tell us about trade and interaction between far-flung groups.</p>
<h2>Why do people need currency?</h2>
<p>There are many theories about the origin of money, in part because money has many functions: It facilitates exchange as a measure of value; it brings diverse societies together by enabling gift-giving and reciprocity; it perpetuates social hierarchies; and finally, it is a medium of state power. It’s hard to accurately date interactions involving currency of various kinds, but evidence suggests they emerged from gift exchanges and debt repayments. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174546/original/file-20170619-28475-4rc2o7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese shell money from 3,000 years ago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_shell_money_16th_8th_century_BCE.jpg">PHGCOM</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Objects that occurred rarely in nature and whose circulation could be efficiently controlled <a href="https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/">emerged as units of value</a> for interactions and exchange. These included shells such as mother-of-pearl that were widely circulated in the Americas and cowry shells that were used in Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Native copper, meteorites or native iron, obsidian, amber, beads, copper, gold, silver and lead ingots have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700026980">variously served as currency</a>. People even used <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1992.19.2.02a00060">live animals such as cows</a> until relatively recent times <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700085946">as a form of currency</a>.</p>
<p>The Mesopotamian shekel – the first known form of currency – emerged nearly 5,000 years ago. The earliest known mints <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/496935">date to 650 and 600 B.C. in Asia Minor</a>, where the elites of Lydia and Ionia used stamped silver and gold coins to pay armies.</p>
<p>The discovery of hordes of coins of lead, copper, silver and gold all over the globe suggests that coinage – especially in Europe, Asia and North Africa – was recognized as a medium of commodity money at the beginning of the first millennium A.D. The <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/op.php?isbn=9780520055063">wide circulation of Roman</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XC.CCCLVII.721">Islamic</a>, Indian and Chinese coins <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/coinage-roman-economy-300-bc-ad-700">points to premodern commerce (1250 B.C. - A.D. 1450)</a>. </p>
<p>Coinage as commodity money owes its success largely to its portability, durability, transportability and inherent value. Additionally, political leaders could control the production of coins – from mining, smelting, minting - as well as their circulation and use. Other forms of wealth and money, such as cows, successfully served pastoral societies, but weren’t easy to transport – and of course were susceptible to ecological disasters.</p>
<p>Money soon became an instrument of political control. Taxes could be extracted to support the elite and armies could be raised. However, money could also act as a stabilizing force that fostered nonviolent exchanges of goods, information and services within and between groups.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174545/original/file-20170619-22085-tlsmfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Medieval English tally sticks recorded transactions and monetary debts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Medieval_tally_sticks.jpg">Winchester City Council Museums</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout history <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802901">money has acted as a record</a>, a memory of transactions and interactions. For instance, medieval Europeans widely <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/how-would-you-like-to-pay">used tally sticks as evidence for remembering debt</a>.</p>
<h2>Follow the money to see the trade routes</h2>
<p>In the past, as today, no society was completely self-sustaining, and money allowed people to interact with other groups. People used different forms of currency to mobilize resources, reduce risks and create alliances and friendships in response to specific social and political conditions. The abundance and nearly universal evidence of movement of exotic goods over diverse regions inhabited by people who were independent of each other – from hunter-gatherers to pastoralists, to farmers and city dwellers – points to the significance of currency as a uniting principle. It’s like a common language everyone could speak.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/279542">Americans who lived</a> in the Early Formative Period dating from 1450 to 500 B.C. used obsidian, mother-of-pearl shell, iron ore and two kinds of pottery as currency to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/203249">trade across the Americas</a> in one of the <a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/exchange-systems-in-prehistory/earle/978-0-12-227650-7">earliest examples of a successful global trade</a>. The <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520214743">Maritime Silk Road trade</a>, which occurred between A.D. 700 to 1450, connected Europeans, Asians and Africans <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/regional-and-world-history-general-interest/cross-cultural-trade-world-history">in a global trade</a> that was both transformational and foundational.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174064/original/file-20170615-24999-126bacf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese coin from early 1400s found in Kenya by the author.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chapurukha Kusimba</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my own excavation work in 2012, I recovered a 600-year-old Chinese Yongle Tongbao coin at the ancient Kenyan trade port Manda, in the Indian Ocean. Chinese coins were small disks of copper and silver with a hole in the center so they could be worn on a belt. This coin was issued by Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty. He was interested in political and trade missions to the lands beyond the South China Sea and sent Admiral Zheng He to explore those shores, nearly 80 years before Vasco da Gama reached India from Portugal. </p>
<p>Archaeological discoveries like this one illustrate Africa’s integration into trade interactions in the Indian Ocean. They also show evidence that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774312000029">market economies based on cash money</a> were developing at this time. On the East African coast, there were local merchants and <a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-063118919X.html">kings of the local Swahili</a> who followed Islam and cultivated these external contacts with other Indian Ocean traders. They wanted to <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00672708609511372">facilitate business dealings</a>, while <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0471.1996.tb00094.x">merchants from the Near East and South Asia</a> had their own Rolodexes of business contacts. Coinage was not just a local affair but also a way of leaving a calling card, a signature and a symbolic token of connections. </p>
<p>As the history of money has shown, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802901">currency’s impact is double-edged</a>: It enabled the movement of goods and services, migration and settlement amongst strangers. It brought wealth to some, while hastening the development of socioeconomic and other distinctions. The same patterns unfold today with the modern relationship between China and Africa, now more intertwined and unequal than when Admiral Zheng He first brought coins from China in a diplomatic gesture, as a symbolic extension of friendship across the distance separating the two.</p>
<p>In our time, possession of cash currency differentiates the rich from the poor, the developed from the developing, the global north from the emerging global south. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802901">Money is both personal and impersonal</a> and global inequality today is linked to the formalization of money as a measure of societal well-being and sustainability. Even as currency continues to evolve in our digital age, its uses today would still be familiar to our ancient predecessors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chapurukha Kusimba receives funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the US Institute of Education (USIE).</span></em></p>Currency first hit the scene thousands of years ago. An anthropologist explains the early origins and uses of money – and how archaeological finds fill in our picture of the past.Chapurukha Kusimba, Professor of Anthropology, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/796182017-06-20T01:33:19Z2017-06-20T01:33:19ZHow secure are today’s ATMs? 5 questions answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174250/original/file-20170616-545-1gvt3vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Using an ATM isn't risk-free, but there's a lot of security already.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-using-her-credit-card-on-456051055">milicad/shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Automated teller machines, better known as ATMs, are turning 50 on June 27. Computer science professor Pradeep Atrey, from the University at Albany, State University of New York, explains the security features and concerns of modern cash machines.</em></p>
<h2>1. How does an ATM work?</h2>
<p>In the broadest sense, an ATM works by accepting a cash request from a user, verifying the user’s authority to access a particular bank account, ensuring that account has enough money to fulfill the request and dispensing the money – all without the assistance of a bank clerk or teller.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174247/original/file-20170616-1205-bag4d1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British actor Reg Varney becomes the first user of an ATM on June 27, 1967, in Enfield, England, north of London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RegVarneyATM.jpg">NewYork1956</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the very beginning, all the way back to the first ATM placed in use in London in 1967, <a href="https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/9461/">the user’s identity was the main problem</a> banks needed to solve. Rather than today’s plastic card with a magnetic strip and embedded microchip, the first machine <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6230194.stm">accepted a slip of paper with a mildly radioactive substance</a> – carbon-14 – printed on it in a particular pattern. The machine matched the pattern to a number code entered by the user. If it matched, and if the funds were available, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6230194.stm">machine dispensed up to £10</a> (an <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/default.aspx">amount worth</a> <a href="http://currencyconverter.io/166.57-gbp-usd">just over US$200</a> today).</p>
<p>When using modern ATMs, a customer inserts a plastic card into the machine’s reader, which registers either the data encoded on the card’s magnetic strip or its embedded chip. It prompts the customer for a personal identification number, usually called a PIN, often four or six digits long.</p>
<p>If the card and PIN match, then the customer can deposit money, check an account balance or, most commonly, request a cash withdrawal. When the customer specifies an amount of money, the machine uses an internet connection or a phone line to connect to the customer’s bank, verifying the funds are available and dispensing the cash.</p>
<h2>2. What security issues do ATMs have?</h2>
<p>Because ATMs contain large amounts of cash, they are attractive targets for criminals. The most brazen thefts have involved <a href="http://fox6now.com/2017/04/26/devastating-burglars-rip-an-atm-from-gas-station-its-caught-on-camera/">physically stealing the ATM as a whole</a>, though muggers have also <a href="https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170612/washington-park/atm-robbery">accosted ATM users</a>, who, unsurprisingly, are <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9560/ff6cf46f52180cc1903e5e9f7341f95fe28c.pdf">likely to be carrying cash</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eVMTfGQe51g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">ATM customers can be attractive targets for muggers.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, most ATMs today have <a href="https://www.atmmarketplace.com/articles/atm-surveillance-preserving-the-atm-protecting-the-customer/">built-in cameras</a>, to record evidence in case of a mugging or other crime, or to monitor people who might be <a href="https://www.google.com/patents/US20090201372">tampering with the machine</a>.</p>
<p>A more sophisticated theft involves covertly monitoring the device and its users. Thieves can <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/can-spot-tiny-hidden-camera-atm-photo-police-warn-new-fraud/">install small cameras in different places on an ATM</a>, sometimes hidden by plastic panels that look like normal parts of the machine. With those, they can capture the card number, its expiration date, the name on the card, and even the three-digit card verification value (CVV) number on the back. That’s more than enough information to use the card to make <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/can-i-use-a-debit-card-online-315325">unauthorized online purchases look legitimate</a>. Fraudsters may also <a href="https://theconversation.com/buying-and-selling-hacked-passwords-how-does-it-work-60894?sr=2">sell the data</a> in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17440572.2016.1197123">online black markets</a>.</p>
<p>By installing fake card slots, or even extra attachments (called “skimmers”) on top of the existing card slot, attackers can read the information on cards’ magnetic strips. That can help them make <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/522417/Fraud-clone-bank-cards-contactless-device">fake duplicate cards</a> to use in other ATMs.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a2Q64XmZpc4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Can a thermal camera reveal your passcode?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hidden cameras also let thieves watch users enter their PINs. A recent study found that a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025461">thermal camera can also capture PINs</a>, by identifying which number keys are slightly warmed, because they were pressed by the user. Specifically, the researchers found that PIN detection accuracy could be up to 78 percent when the heat traces on the key pad are captured within 30 seconds of authentication. A similar study reveals that it was <a href="http://concordia.ab.ca/research/research-at-concordia/research-clusters/issam-research-cluster/security-of-industrial-control-systems-and-other-cyber-physical-systems/">possible to find all four digits of the PIN</a> from a distance of 35 centimeters and if the thermal camera was placed at an angle between 30 and 45 degrees. However, it was much harder to identify the correct sequence of the digits.</p>
<h2>3. Can ATMs be hacked?</h2>
<p>Tech-savvy criminals have several options for hacking ATMs. The outer casings of ATMs often conceal hidden USB ports, used for software maintenance and update. If an attacker can locate the hidden port, he can <a href="https://www.wired.com/2013/12/whos-robbing-atms-usb-stick/">insert a portable USB drive with a malicious program installed</a>, taking control of the machine. That essentially allows the attacker to dispense cash without using a card. </p>
<p>A few years ago, a new attack became popular. Called a “black box” attack by police, the theft involves cutting holes in the ATM casing and physically disconnecting cables between the computer and the mechanism that actually dispenses the cash. <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/01/thieves-jackpot-atms-with-black-box-attack/">Plugging another computer into the cash dispenser’s controls</a> lets an attacker order it to release large amounts of cash.</p>
<p>The ATM’s telecommunications connection offers another means of attack. By intercepting communications between the machine and the bank, an attacker can collect useful card and account data. That may also offer a way to <a href="http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/53758/cyber-crime/jackpotting-attacks.html">remotely install malicious software</a> and take control of the machine itself: for instance, to issue commands to dispense cash.</p>
<h2>4. What security measures are or can be deployed?</h2>
<p>ATM-related fraud and theft can’t be completely prevented. Banks are working to develop <a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/04/all-about-fraud-how-crooks-get-the-cvv/">additional security measures</a>, such as the <a href="https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/resources/what-is-a-cvv-code">three-digit CVV on the back of cards</a>. Individuals can also take preventive measures to protect themselves when using ATMs:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>If your bank issues them, use a chip-enabled card. They provide improved security by verifying the physical card is genuine, and not a fake duplicate.</p></li>
<li><p>It is often safer to use an indoor ATM, rather than one directly on the street, which can be accessed more easily by criminals either before or after your transaction.</p></li>
<li><p>Check the ATM to see if it looks like it has been physically altered or damaged, if anything is attached to the built-in card reader (to read the magnetic strip) or if there are any small cameras around the keypad. Avoid using it if anything looks suspicious.</p></li>
<li><p>Be careful of your surroundings and the people in the ATM area. A person behind you in line may be trying to catch a glimpse of the PIN you enter on the keypad.</p></li>
<li><p>Cover the key pad when entering your PIN so no observer or spy camera can see it.</p></li>
<li><p>If you enter the correct PIN but the transaction fails, immediately contact the bank that issued the card to warn them that there might be a problem with the machine or your account.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>5. How can new technology make ATMs more secure?</h2>
<p>As the ever-escalating arms race between ATM security professionals and criminals continues, customers will find themselves urged to use increasingly advanced security methods to identify themselves at ATMs. One method is <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-age-of-hacking-brings-a-return-to-the-physical-key-73094">two-factor authentication</a>, which adds an additional layer of security a user must pass before being allowed access to an account.</p>
<p>Often used when logging in to online services like social media and email systems, two-factor authentication has most commonly involved entering not only the PIN but also a <a href="https://blogs.sap.com/2014/05/12/stronger-authentication-with-one-time-password-solution/">numeric code received by text message</a> on the user’s phone and valid for only a short period of time. </p>
<p>This method, <a href="http://trustedidentities.blogs.govdelivery.com/2016/07/29/questionsand-buzz-surrounding-draft-nist-special-publication-800-63-3/">no longer considered secure</a> because it is so easy to falsely simulate cellphone numbers, is <a href="https://threatpost.com/nist-recommends-sms-two-factor-authentication-deprecation/119507/">being phased out</a> in favor of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUFN.2015.7182589">smartphone apps that generate new codes</a> every few seconds – or even <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-age-of-hacking-brings-a-return-to-the-physical-key-73094">physical keys</a>. Without this <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2810103.2813692">one-time code</a>, an attacker can’t access the victim’s bank account.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174246/original/file-20170616-493-dv8jmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An ATM in Japan has a palm scanner, just to the right of the main display screen, to verify users’ identities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_ATM_Palm_Scanner.jpg">Chris 73</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Future methods of user authentication at ATMs are likely to involve biometrics, like fingerprints, which could augment – or even replace – the cards and PINs that have gotten banks and users through the past 50 years of automated banking.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pradeep Atrey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years after the first ATM went into service, the main problem – identifying authorized users – remains the same. But methods for doing so have improved significantly.Pradeep Atrey, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University at Albany, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.