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.
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.
Pradeep Atrey, University at Albany, State University of New York
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.