Cross-cultural communication （80）　

80) Cashless
The last year of the Heisei era (2019) has begun, and I think that everyone is starting to prepare the documents they will need for their tax returns. So, in this article, I would like to talk about a topic related to money that could be considered a case of “cross-cultural communication”.

At the end of 2018, the Financial Services Agency announced that it would be promoting the use of cashless payments in Japan for various reasons. The rate of cashless payments in Japan for consumption at places like shops and restaurants is only around 20%, which is a much lower figure than the 45% in the US, 60% in China, and 89% in South Korea.

Now, in Europe, including France where I spent two and a half years in late 1990s, cashless payments are much more advanced than in Japan, although not as advanced as in China and South Korea. At the time, about 60% of my patients at the hospital in Paris paid by cash. This was partly because the amount of the first consultation fee was rather large (about 10,000 yen), but patients who did not pay by cash wrote personal checks. Under these circumstances, there was a certain group of patients who paid in cash at the hospital. These were people who had come to Paris from Russia for medical examinations and treatment. This was in the mid-1990s, so it wasn't long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, the average Russian citizen didn't have the income to come all the way to Paris to receive medical treatment. The only people who could afford to do so were the oligarchs, the new Russian financial cliques. These were people who had managed to acquire the state-owned property of the former Soviet Union (including weapons from the former Soviet Union army) through shrewd maneuvering. You can probably guess why they pay in cash - it's because if they pay by credit card, their tracks will be traced. Many of the oligarchs own a lot of property that they don't want to be traced. As the hospital's fees for tests, operations and rooms are all actual costs without insurance, it's not unusual for people to have to pay several million yen. I have seen groups of people with bodyguards carrying bulging suitcases of cash when they were leaving the hospital.

I have one more comment to make about the fact that using cards can lead to your being tracked down. South Korea is by far the country with the highest rate of cashless transactions. Of course, the South Korean government is actively promoting the use of cards to prevent tax evasion as much as possible. Everyone knows the government's intentions. Therefore, if the amount spent on cards exceeds 10% of annual income, 10% of the excess amount is deducted from taxable income. By making full use of this carrot and stick approach, they have achieved an astonishing cashless rate of 89%.
So, I have told you that there are various upsides and downsides to the cashless society that has been progressing around the world over the past 20 years or so.

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