The shift to a cashless society is not only making an impact on your morning coffee routine (when did you last pay for your latte with toonies?), but the cash-free trend is also impacting life on the home front.
One of those changes has to do with your coin jar.
The Coin Jar
We all have one, or at least we did, often in the form of a Mason jar filled with quarters or your favourite over-sized beer stein brimming with loonies. There’s always been a practical benefit to that haphazard collection of coins: it was one of the few places where we saved money. Who hasn’t enjoyed a jolt of pleasure from collecting a jar of change over several months and hauling it to your local bank branch or grocery store and converting it into cash?
It’s always felt pretty good to walk out with $384.77 in your pocket (oh sorry, $346.30 after the 10% fee one pays to avoid spending two hours rolling those coins ourselves). That cash always feels like found money which has slowly accumulated in a de facto personal savings account in our back bedrooms – money that can come in handy if you’ve just moved or bought a new house.
Chances are, that coin jar – if you still have one– is not filling up the way it used to as we move into a cashless society where we pay for purchases and services by tapping a card or using a mobile app.
This shift to cashlessness doesn’t mean we lose our coin jar – it’s just being reengineered.
The Future of Payments
There’s much to be said about living cash-free. Experts tell us the surest way to qualify for a mortgage is to establish a good credit rating – something you can’t do if you pay with cash. Sweden has announced it will be the first completely cashless country by 2023.
We’re hearing more about peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-business (P2B) payments, the ability to send and receive money digitally with ease. This includes paying your dog walker, tipping a valet, effortlessly making charitable donations or paying a trade for odd jobs around your new home – perhaps tipping the mover. And it’s done on a device we all own, our mobile phone. P2P and P2B are the next areas in tech that are being disrupted. Secure payments can be made quickly on a mobile device instead of more traditional time-consuming methods.
The Future of the Coin Jar
There are now mobile apps that allow you to collect all of that “digital change.” One of these is FOOi, a mobile application that facilitates peer-to-peer and peer-to-business financial transactions (www.fooi.ca). (FOOi is Dutch for “gratuity.” The app is excellent for tipping hospitality workers.)
This is where your traditional coin jar morphs into a digital coin jar. Using FOOi with friends,family and businesses, you’ll start to build up the balance in your digital wallet. Friends and associates sending you money via FOOi means you’re collecting “cash” without even thinking about it. Just when you need to purchase a bathroom mirror for the new house or make a charitable donation, you’ll pop open the app and realize you have a few hundred dollars you’d forgotten about.
Moving homes is one of the most exciting changes we make in our lives. Moving into the cashless world is equally exciting – and we’re all going to be living there one day.
App Store Link:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/fooi/id1294944174?mt=8
GooglePlay Store Link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fooi&hl=en_CA
Website:
Sean Cooper is the bestselling author of the book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians, available now on Amazon and at Chapters, Indigo and major bookstores, and as an Audiobook on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.