Once your finances are exclusively electronic, none of your transactions are unequivocally private. Everything you buy will be recorded, every transfer of funds known to the bank and any other third party to whom the data is made available. The data will, of course, be used for many purposes, including targeted advertising.

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But there’s a more serious concern. If you hold savings, you will be unable to obtain them as cash, and that is a way to control how you spend, what you spend and can even make you spend!

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The World Economic Forum (2) reports that central banks’ interest rates are already, and have been for some years, below zero. Yet they are still able to accumulate finds from investors, suggesting that people are prepared to pay a small premium for the convenience of holding savings in a bank. If this translates to high street bank policy, how far will savers go in pursuit of convenience? So far, the WEF say, rates of -0.75% have not resulted in a rush to convert savings to cash. If we look ahead to a financial world in which cash is no longer an option, costs of keeping savings will become the convention. If a financial crisis then arises, the banks will rally by dipping interest rates still further into deficit. Say your savings account is hit by negative interest rates of negative 5%: you will be paying 5% (or more) of your savings to your bank every year. You can’t take it as cash to rescue your funds. What will you do? The most likely option is to spend on high value items that maintain or appreciate in value.

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And, remember, whether your bank holds savings or not, every single item you buy will be recorded in a vast database that shows how you live your life. Where you are when you spend. Where you go to eat. How much you drink. Which supermarket you prefer and how much you spend there. Any political affiliation revealed by your magazine or union subscriptions. Your gender preference implied by your spending choices. In fact, every aspect of your life converted into data. Cash is freedom. Card is constraint.