Electronic payments haven’t hurt cash a bit

Regular readers know that I am skeptical about e-wallet systems – not that they won’t be widely used; of course they will – but about talk that they will someday replace the leather kind.

Here’s another data point to support that skepticism: The United States government is still printing money like it grows on trees.

From a MarketWatch story:

In fact, the amount of small bills in circulation — $ 1s to $ 20s — has remained pretty resilient over the past two decades, according to Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex. That’s even as Americans have become bigger users of credit and debit cards and have begun using online payments like (eBay’s) soon-to-be-spun-off PayPal, and more recently, Square (and) Apple Pay. Some have even used virtual currencies like bitcoin.

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