Can ‘Dirty Cash’ Move Us To A Cashless Society?

If you saw a $20 bill on the ground, would you pick it up? Sure, everyone loves an extra buck or two, but do you know where that cash has been?

A recent study by MasterCard and Oxford University found that even the bills sitting safely in a wallet are likely covered in bacteria. However, the majority of people do not wash their hands after handling cash, even if they are aware of the potentially unhygienic material they are touching.

The research found that the average European bank note contained 26,000 bacteria, which could be potentially harmful to a person’s health. Even so, a follow-up survey by MasterCard found that only one in five individuals wash their hands after having handled cash. In that second survey, MasterCard interviewed over 9,000 consumers in Europe and the majority of individuals ranked physical money as being more unhygienic than hand rails on public transport or communal food, such as nuts in a bar.

In a blog post, Dr. Jim O’Mahony, lecturer in Biological Sciences at The Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland, noted that there are no firmly adopted international guidelines on the use of handling cash during seasonal flu outbreaks. As such, he advised consumers to stay aware of the potentially germ-ridden paper money. Cashless transactions would be a logical answer to keeping people healthy, he said.

“Given that the majority of people acknowledge that handling cash could be perceived as being hazardous – yet on a practical basis people are disinclined to adopt basic hygiene practices – a more successful approach may be to encourage the use of more cashless transactions,” O’Mahony wrote. “This would seem like a logical approach given the consumer research highlighted 66 percent of Europeans prefer to use a card or contactless payments over cash.”

Furthermore, MasterCard found that 39 percent of Europeans are open to the idea of using a credit or debit card or contactless payment instead of cash to be more hygienic. In terms of replacing cash, the majority of surveyed individuals – 63 percent – chose card payments, while 35 percent said that they would prefer to make online payments instead of using cash.

Cash might be dirty, but switching over to literal money laundering might not be the answer either, according to experts. The “dirty money” survey found Europeans are having a difficult time eliminating cash from their daily lives, noted Chris Kangas, head of contactless payments for MasterCard Europe. While innovative, contactless payments can also prevent some bacteria and germs from spreading, Kangas said.