A cashless society is inevitable and likely achievable as early as the year 2030, but financial institutions bear a social responsibility to ensure that those dependent on cash aren’t left behind, said Shawn Rose, Scotiabank’s Chief Digital Officer, during a recent American Banker podcast about how bankers can ease the transition to a cashless society.

“We have to make sure that accessibility to cash, which is an equalizer in many countries, continues to be a critical part of the banking and payments ecosystem,” said Rose.

For everyone to participate equally in a cashless society, financial institutions must cater to the underserved and underbanked, said Rose. On one hand, there are those who already have access to smartphones but need educating on how to use digital channels for their everyday banking needs. On the other, there are those who don’t have the technical acumen nor the funds to buy a smartphone and, in some cases, don’t even have a bank account.

“The more difficult issues to solve are those who’ve been left behind,” said Rose. “So, how do we enable those people who don’t have the technical sophistication … they actually don’t have the tools at their disposal, meaning the technology in their hand to be able to participate?”

Rose proposes that Point of Sale (POS) systems is one area where large tech companies can work together to ensure accessibility. He would like to see these companies share open APIs, publicly available application programming interfaces, to enable easy and free transactions on a network. Software developers would use these open APIs to access code with which to design POS systems that interact with each other to accept cash payments, and that ultimately don’t penalize those dependent on cash.

“We can eventually get to a point where at least those at the POS can accept cash and eventually get cash off the street, but we can also allow these customers to transact through these systems,” said Rose.

One thing to keep in mind, he warns, is that we must protect these already cash-dependent customers from bearing the cost of the transaction. They can’t be made to pay additional fees on top of the value of the goods they’re purchasing.

“It’s critically important that we help them participate, but it’s going to take some time,” said Rose. “If you don’t have access to that smartphone, how do you do that? We can do that at the POS and banks can figure out how to make this frictionless and very cost-effective, and then the whole ecosystem can potentially move forward.”

Another gamechanger, he adds, will be the advent of the 5G-enabled smartphone. Having access to an incredible amount of spectrum aside, the 5G network will enable efficient and cost-effective devices that will basically be “glass upstreaming to a 5G environment” and accessible to many around the world.

A cashless society may be a decade or so away, but Rose is certain that we’re well on our way. “The amplifier will be when we can get the tools in the hands of everybody, truly accessible tools, open tools, frictionless tools … and we can then service everyone equally.”

Listen to the podcast here.