Since last 9 years, most of us have stopped carrying cash as default transaction medium and carried out our daily transactions with ease, say 98% of the time.. but are not without those rare occasions where we have felt, wish i had some cash..
Cut to the chase, the only problem most of us face with respect to using cash, apart from wallet size is the lack of change, ie. smaller denominations of currency to be exchanged as the balance to be returned after a purchase. Most vendors enable e-payments and not having cash is not a problem here, you would have even tried dishing out a 500 for a purchase of 50, but due to the shortage of smaller denomination currency to give out as balance, these vendors insist on e-payments.
Tipping at local restaurants, or when someone is in urgent need of cash, or you are dealing with a very small vendor eg puncture shop, small business/single vendors such as auto drivers who are not used to e-wallets or you want to spend some cash at a temple, for parking fee, a remote general shop when you are travelling, or if you want to help someone in need, who could use some cash to get meal.
On another dimension, as it gets rarer, currency in different denomination and colour has really turned into a collector's item. Numismatists, after all are people who collect rare coins and currencies. A practical experiment - would you keep your hand on your heart and say, you part with the crispiest of the colourful paper or you mentally play an algorithm that arranges the currency in descending order of crumpled state and dish out the most aged looking one first.. the crispier and fitter ones are reserved for spending after you have run out of the less attractive ones. Move over FIFO, LIFO this is CMFO - Crumpled Most First Out..
And each of us have a rare set of relatives, mostly retired uncles, who still go to the local bank branch and get fresh notes across the spectrum from the cashier, an appointment that has been fixed weeks in advance, to guarantee that their wish of colourful notes would be granted in the denomination of their choice.. if you have such folks, please treasure them and pay them in bitcoin even if they have no idea about it, so they share a colourful combo of these notes. But this set of uncles are an endangered species who may go out of existence soon enough if not already so.
For those of us who dont have this near and dear to part with colourful notes, the last avail is the ATM but they dish out predominantly the highest denomination of currency, hence this is mostly not the solution for those specific moments where you need smaller sums, and this 500s in grey is not even colourful!
So I stumbled on Indusind bank ATM where you can specify the denominations of choice and not have to restrict to only the 500s like all other bank ATMs. This made me wonder why other banks have not resorted to this unique offering which could bring in more footfalls in their ATMs. This would ensure more ATM withdrawal commission fee income for the bank and more importantly wont make you feel short of cash when you need it the most.
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