What Happens When Real Money Is Gone?

It will look a lot like paying someone back for coffee through the productivity app you use for work.

Carrying cash stresses me out; physical bills feel like Monopoly money, liable to slip out of my hands at any given monent. I prefer the consequences of a debit card purchase — taking it out of my wallet, hesitating before I purchase, really thinking things through. The rise of peer to peer payment apps like Venmo are great replacements for cash, but something about this uncomfortable marriage of Slack and PayPa gives me pause.

Need cash? Let me Slack it to you

Slack is a communications tool for offices that will eventually take over your life, if you let it. Slack wants you to do everything at work inside Slack; you will email and store documents and communicate without ever leaving its calm, soothing interior. PayPal is a service that some people use to send money to other people; I have used it primarily to buy cut-rate Birkenstocks from eBay, but I understand and appreciate its utility. PayPal now has a bot that you can use to pay people through Slack.

Maybe you’re wondering why, precisely, this would be necessary, and if so — I agree. The video above indicates that you could use it for, say, ordering coffee for the office, or paying people back for lunch. While I appreciate the ease that this potentially offers, I still think nothing beats human interaction. Call me crazy, but there’s something nice about the time-honored tradition of dragging yourself around the office and interacting with your fellow adults about the $5.50 you’re owed for the coffee and croissant you just gave them that will not be easily replicated by “sending” them “money” via Slack.

This is the future and I am likely the grump in the corner railing against a seamless, frictionless economy unburdened by the messy uncleanliness of actual, physical money, but I will die on that hill clutching a wad of crumpled five dollar bills. Money should still exchange physical hands! There should be consequences felt for the money that you’re spending, even if it is just to savor the feel of a particularly smooth bill leaving your hands and going into someone else’s.

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