Challenging, but possible...

Ultimately, the “human sacrifice” that was the Gocashless project was about testing the waters and seeing whether living a genuinely cash free life was a reality that one could survive in. I can unequivocally state, from my own personal experience of not touching any currency for three months, going cashless in South Africa is challenging, but possible.

Looking back on my time as the cashless ambassador leads to me to believe that we’ve spread this message really well and you can see in the comments around the stories we’ve been producing that going cashless was a topic that not only interests the local community, but is in fact something that more people than we realise are already trying to do in their daily lives.

I think back to the first week of this entire project, stranded at a petrol station, tank full, wallet empty and a debit card that was of no use. I think how far I have in those three months, knowing what do to, how to do it, how to adapt my lifestyle to living cashless. Since that first ill fated purchase caused me to question the viability of what it was that I was doing, I haven’t had a single petrol related issue - it was a matter of going to the right places and forcing myself into a habit of checking before transacting – when in doubt, show the man your card and see whether cashless is an option. You’ll be amazed at how often it is.

Having said that, it’s not as though this has all been plain sailing...

The car guards, as most of you quite correctly mentioned, are the untouchables on this one, as is parking in the centre of any of our major cities. It seems that clothing and “free stuff” were decent enough ways to get around this for a time, but at some point you will run out of old clothes or corporate baseball caps and that’s when conversations get interesting. Thanks to many users of the site, the issues around parking in shopping malls “multi-plex” parking complexes were solved and slowly but surely we are starting to see pre-paid parking options spring up around the country - something that happened during the campaign (it would be nice to say that it was as a direct result of this campaign, but my illusions of grandeur are not quite that high...)

Drinking, as I had a feeling it might, caused one of two headaches, quite often the night before the morning after. Nightclubs and bars are understandably prickly when it comes to buying 23 jaeger-bombs on the old “drink now, swipe later” promise when they don’t have your credit card behind the bar, but apart from having to sign a large volume of till slips, the only really issue there is that you better have the right pricing option with your bank if you plan on swiping up to 10 times in a single night.

Christmas was insightful to say the least and I must admit to feeling a little lump in my throat when many of the major retail stores began to designate specific tills to “card only” customers and that despite what many people may have thought, those queues moved faster (They were also filled with far better looking people, but that’s an aside).

The odd small town corner cafe provided a frequent pain in the arse, given that I have spent most of my life with a wickedly powerful sweet tooth, but my diet of late afternoon sugary drinks and snacks was severely curtailed by not being able to buy from hawkers and informal vendors and I did lose 3kg’s over the course of the project (this may well hark back to the bit about better looking people in the card only till).

I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the cashless army on the website over the course of the last three months and I must admit that although we developed a website with my face plastered all over the shop, it only resulted in one genuine stalker (fortunately female). I gingerly wait for the day when our local car guard population get access to the web and stumble upon this site – there will no doubt some grumpy men who remember chasing me down the road for the odd tip here or there.

The issue of a cashless existence is one which is yet to see the full extent to which it can be tested. I am certain that in future cashless campaigns, technology will play an increasingly more important role in the capability of going cashless and things like mobile phones are going to become pivotal to living cashless.

Thanks to everyone who spent time interacting with me on Gocashless over the last three months and to everybody that helped make the experience all the more enjoyable – it is an experience that I have thoroughly enjoyed and one which I hope to be able to take up again at a later stage.

Watch this space, someday soon you might well see the return of the Cashless Ambassador...