As an old friend of ours, cash is falling into a development myth.
On the one hand, commemorative coins and banknotes for the Year of the Dragon are "harder to grab than Spring Festival tickets";On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer scenarios of using cash, especially the phenomenon of refusing to accept cash, which is in the news from time to time.
Recently, the People's Bank of China issued an administrative penalty for refusing to accept RMB cash, and the two companies and related responsible persons were fined a total of 260,000 yuan.
Under the influence of the "holiday effect" from New Year's Day to the Spring Festival, it is the time when the demand for cash soars. People are also lamenting, should you use cash to send red envelopes?
Figure Worm Creative.
Cash rejections appear from time to time
According to the penalty information released by the People's Bank of China, the units that were **** this time were Chinese Life Property Insurance Co., Ltd. *** Beijing Huairou Branch Company and Beijing Dashibank Century Automobile Sales *** were fined 190,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan respectively for refusing the public to use RMB cash to purchase insurance and car insuranceAfter that, the person directly responsible was also given a warning and fined 10,000 yuan each.
Judging from the amount alone, the penalty is not much, but it still has caused a considerable degree of heated discussion on the Internet, and behind it is that the phenomenon of refusing to accept cash has repeatedly appeared.
In August 2023, the toll collector in the parking lot of a hospital in Shanghai refused to accept 5 jiao banknotes and tore them up on the spot saying "there is no why", and his bad attitude appeared on the hot search. Subsequently, the illegal act of intentionally damaging the RMB will be punished according to law.
Even some banks want to "not accept RMB". Liaoning Zhenxing Bank and Beijing Zhongguancun Bank, as private banks, have successively announced at the beginning of 2022 that they will suspend cash receipt and payment business from March 1 and April 1, 2022 respectively. However, the act was halted, and on February 22, 2022, the two banks said they would continue cash operations in compliance with the central bank's regulations.
There is also no shortage of netizens complaining about the phenomenon of refusing to accept cash on social platforms.
If you refuse to accept it without change, what should the elderly do?"It's outrageous, insurance companies don't accept cash" "Many restaurants don't accept cash either, just say online ordering" "If you encounter that kind of cash is more expensive, only mobile payment can enjoy *** Is it discrimination?".”
One fact that needs to be made clear is that it is illegal to refuse to accept cash.
Shao Ying, a lawyer at Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing, told China News Weekly that Article 16 of the People's Bank of China Law stipulates that the legal tender of the People's Republic of China is the renminbi. No unit or individual may refuse to accept all public and private debts within the territory of the People's Republic of China in renminbi.
From a regulatory point of view, the rectification action against the refusal of cash has also continued in recent years.
As early as July 2018, the People's Bank of China Announcement (2018 No. 10) was issued, carrying out a nationwide centralized rectification action against cash refusal.
In October 2023, the People's Bank of China and 12 ministries and commissions once again launched a special rectification work to refuse to accept RMB cash. As of December 24, 2023, the central bank has accumulated 141 business entities10,000 households, and completed six penalty procedures for refusing to accept cash.
Taking Beijing as an example, since 2018, the Beijing Branch of the People's Bank of China has imposed economic penalties ranging from 50,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan on 20 entities that refused to accept cash, with a cumulative fine of 3.04 million yuan, ranking first in the country in terms of the number and amount of penalties. The penalized units involve tourist attractions, transportation, health care, parking lots, shopping, catering, entertainment and other industry scenarios.
Since it violates laws and regulations, why are there still merchants who take risks and refuse to accept cash?
Mobile payment substitution is obvious
At the recent briefing on the special rectification work of refusing to accept RMB cash held by the People's Bank of China, Zeng Zhicheng, deputy governor of the Beijing branch of the People's Bank of China, introduced that from the punishment cases, there are two main reasons for the refusal to accept cash: First, the business entity has a weak awareness of legal compliance and lack of legal norms and business training for employees to carry out cash receipt and payment;Second, the business entity rejects or refuses cash payment on the grounds of cost control and risk prevention and control.
Recently, China News Weekly visited a number of shopping malls in Beijing and found that although the vast majority of merchants support digital ordering and checkout, they also support cash payment and are equipped with "change boxes", but the situation of "refusing cash" still exists individually.
In some coffee and tea stores in Changying Tianjie, a well-known shopping mall in Beijing, when faced with consumers' cash payment needs, the clerks did not refuse, but said respectively, "There is no change to find, it is best to pay the right amount", "Today's change is only 2 yuan, it may not be convenient to change, you need to wait", "You pay me cash, I use my mobile phone to place an order for you, and you also enjoy *** grid".
China Newsweek also noticed that some of the ordering systems that have been "coerced" by digitalization do not refuse to accept cash, but they also make cash payments lose the convenience they should enjoy.
Taking many fast-food restaurants as an example, the first step of ordering customers is to encounter a "paperless" menu, which needs to be scanned by self-service mobile phone to enter the ordering system to operate. After the order is completed, the payment must be completed before the order can be truly successful, and there is no "opportunity" for cash payment in the full-link scenario of dining.
Zhang Meng, deputy director of the Currency, Gold and Silver Bureau of the People's Bank of China, said that more and more offline scenarios and mobile payments** have made it difficult to use cash, while the willingness of some business entities to collect cash has declined, and the cash services of some commercial banks are insufficient, and the current refusal to accept cash is still difficult to eliminate.
Behind it is the strong substitution of mobile payment.
Dong Yun, deputy director of the Payment and Clearing Research Center of the Institute of Finance and Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China News Weekly that mobile payment has an obvious substitution effect on cash payment, and mobile payment tools supported by new technologies have better adapted to the people's and economic development's multi-faceted needs for payment convenience, security and effectiveness, and effectively reduced market transaction costs.
In the Spring Festival of 2015, WeChat joined hands with the Spring Festival Gala to open the national red envelope;In the Spring Festival of 2016, Alipay launched the "Jiwufu" activity for the first time. Through the phenomenal national carnival, mobile payment has begun to enter thousands of households in a real sense.
Slowly, cash began to cease to be "necessary". According to the "Report on the Operation of China's Payment and Clearing Industry (2017)", in 2016, 179 bank card cash withdrawals were made9.8 billion transactions, amounting to 655 trillion yuan, down 2 percent year-on-year3% and 1046%, bank card cash withdrawal for the first time "negative growth".
And so it goes. According to data from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, from 2019 to 2022, the average annual decline in the amount of cash received and paid over the counter in outlets was about 14%;The total amount of counter deposits and withdrawals of the Agricultural Bank of China from 2021 to 2023 has also decreased year by year, from 598 trillion yuan fell to 478 trillion yuan.
In addition, the number of ATMs is decreasing. Data released by the People's Bank of China shows that the number of ATMs reached 111 in 2018080,000 units, and by the end of 2022, the number of ATMs was only 89590,000 units.
The cash status is unassailable
Since the substitution effect of mobile payment is obvious, the necessity of ensuring cash payment is in the first place
Luo Rui, director of the Currency, Gold and Silver Bureau of the People's Bank of China, introduced that cash is the country's legal tender and the most basic payment tool, and is a basic public good provided to the whole society, pursuing the maximization of social benefits.
At present, the use of cash is mainly in rural areas and the elderly (over 65 years old), especially in counties, where the elderly are more dependent on cash.
According to a sample survey organized by the People's Bank of China, more than 75% of the elderly regularly use cash. Among them, the number of elderly people in the county accounts for 804%, and the proportion of elderly people in urban areas is 676%。In addition, small and micro businesses in wholesale and retail industries, as well as migrant workers in urban areas, also use more cash.
If the phenomenon of cash refusal continues to spread, it will damage the basic rights and interests of this group of people as financial consumers. Ensuring that cash payment channels are unblocked is not only a practice of people-centered development, but also an integral part of expanding the inclusiveness of financial services," Dong Yun analyzed.
In addition to the strong dependence of specific groups of people, the significance of cash payment in specific scenarios is still difficult to replace.
Cash payments can bring a more secure sense of security. Song Li remembers that once her mobile phone suddenly had no signal, and she felt a kind of embarrassment of being isolated and helpless when she was going out to buy something, "From now on, I must put a 100 yuan bill on the back of my mobile phone case." ”
Sun Peng has adhered to the lifestyle of cash payment since 2022, in his opinion, although electronic payment is convenient, it will lead to "money is spent like a number", and the use of cash consumption can achieve a disguised effect of saving money.
More respondents also said that although there are fewer and fewer scenarios for the use of cash in life, they still choose cash when they need red envelope gifts, and "the sense of ritual and solemnity of cash is irreplaceable."
A contrasting fact is that the demand for cash in China's economic and social development is still relatively strong. At the end of November 2023, the balance of cash in circulation (M0) in China was 1102 trillion yuan, continuing to maintain an upward momentum, a year-on-year increase of 105%。
This shows that the people's demand for cash has maintained a sustained and stable growth trend," Dong Yun judged, although the proportion of cash in the transaction will continue to decrease, but cash cannot be completely replaced, "we may not eventually enter a 'cashless society', but a 'cash-light society', that is, a society dominated by non-cash payment and supplemented by cash payment." ”
Shao Ying reminded that when the public encounters the refusal to accept RMB cash, it is recommended that relevant audio and video recordings and other evidence be retained, and reported to the local branch of the People's Bank of China, or they can call the financial consumer rights protection ** "12363", according to ***
In fact, think about it from another angle, will those merchants who refuse to accept cash refuse to accept red envelopes in the form of cash in their lives?
Reference: Special rectification of RMB cash refusal Continue to rectify cash refusal, January 4, 2024, People's Bank of China.
The People's Bank of China held a briefing on the special rectification work of refusing to accept RMB cash**, December 29, 2023, the People's Bank of China.
Author: Yu Shengmei.